


Volume 3: A Kingdom by the Sea - I

by Anna (arctic_grey)



Series: The Heart Rate of a Mouse [6]
Category: Bandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-05-25
Updated: 2011-07-14
Packaged: 2018-10-24 01:13:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 60,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10731108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arctic_grey/pseuds/Anna
Summary: Trigger warnings for entire series:substance abuse (alcohol, pain killers, drugs), childhood abuse, graphic depictions of sex, dubious consent, mentions of underage sex, mention of date rape, mild violence, minor character death.





	1. (Radio) Waves

See, here’s the thing: life is not a cohesive narrative. It’s made of puzzle pieces. It’s layered.

Erase all documentary evidence on, say, Hitler, except for a letter written to him by Eva Braun in which she recalls that stroll that they took on that sunny Sunday last summer, _mein Liebling_. And if that letter was all that survived of Herr Hitler, then two hundred or two thousand years from now some historian could only conclude that Hitler was probably a charming, lovable man who took his lady friend out for walks back in the twentieth century.

And that’d be it.

All the bad things, all the shit and regrets and all that murder – erased.

Because one piece of evidence does not logically take you to the next one. You always have to stop and take in the bigger picture. Ask yourself what you missed.

Who you missed.

Because events just happen, unplanned and spiralling. _People_ just happen.

And you can squint and turn and twist history around without ever figuring out how you got to where you are now.

Where that significant turn was.

And did you turn on your own or did someone push you?

* * *

The rain outside is torrential, accompanied by a loud, tree-abusing wind coming in from the Atlantic. It’s the kind of a surprise storm that we get up here, and the beach will be white with snow next morning, before it melts away.

The phone line is shitty and keeps crackling. “What?” I repeat, and, “What? I can’t –”

Vicky’s voice is muffled, and a baby cries in the background, and she says something like “he wants” and “questions.”

“No, no interviews,” I say, standing in my living room, staring out of the window and onto the desolate beach. She knows I don’t do interviews. I don’t understand why she’s even suggesting it.

The windows are double-glazed thanks to the rare spark of genius by the previous owner, but the cold radiates through and onto my bare skin. I keep the receiver to my ear and wrap my other arm around my middle, regretting that it’s getting too cold to walk around in mere pyjama pants now.

It always was too cold, but now it’s beating me.

“Ryan,” Vicky says, sounding frustrated.

“Listen, there’s a storm coming in from the ocean. The reception is shit. Put it in the mail, alright? But I don’t do interviews. I do nothing. Remember that.”

I wait for a second in case I receive a reply, but I don’t. I place the receiver down, and then wrap both arms around my middle. Sink back into the silence and its comfort, staring outside.

The waves coming in are big, washing onto the shore with white, salty tips. It’s late November, and the nature’s getting brutal.

Good.

I go back to the kitchen where I was before the phone rang. The floorboards creak in a familiar way, and I step over the third one from the cooker because that’s slightly loose. I should fix that, but don’t. Some things just are better wrong.

The tea is still steaming in its cup, and I top it off with whiskey. Only three things can ruin a man: fame, men and twelve-year-old whiskey. Can’t shake off all of my vices, can I?

I head back upstairs, where the wind battering the house sounds even louder. The record’s finished playing, and I place the mug on the nightstand by the bed before patiently going through the LP stacks on the floor. I settle on Commodores, and soon the needle hits the vinyl.

The covers of the bed are still pulled aside, and so I slip back in and grab my sketch book and the pencil. The figure is disproportioned and not very humanlike, and I’m not good at drawing but it gives me something to do. Something to focus my energies on.

I focus on the eyes and the eyebrows, but I’ll never get it right.

I try, anyway.

The wind and the music dance together. The tea is warm, and the whisky is warm, and the bed is warm.

And it’s good like this.

A survival instinct.

* * *

Clifton is in his early thirties. He’s a mechanic in town, took the business over from his father who passed away last year. Like mine did. We never talk about it, though.

The radio isn’t on. He doesn’t listen to music. He says he doesn’t care for it.

His car slows down in good time and then turns left onto the dirt road leading back to the house. My groceries make clanging sounds of glass at my feet, and I look out the window silently. He’s talking about some car part that he had to order all the way from Boston, and he sounds rather excited about it. I don’t even hum. I don’t have to.

“You ever been to Boston?” he asks.

“Yeah. On tour, you know.”

“Oh, right,” he says in this tone like he only then remembers. “On tour,” he repeats. He sounds slightly despising. He’s just envious, I think. And spiteful of the fact that I’ve seen so much in my life but still wouldn’t know how to change a flat tyre.

We get out of the woods and the road takes us through dead land beyond which is the house, two stories of humble nothing wrapped up in faint blue paint by the beach, the first thing to greet migrating birds, the last thing to say goodbye to those who know better. He drives right up to the porch where his pickup truck creeps to a stop.

“Thanks for the ride, man.”

“No problem.” He scratches his nose and looks ahead and towards the sea that’s the same colour as his eyes. He’s strong built in that mechanic way and has short, black hair that he only sees as a nuisance. “You want to offer a beer?”

“I’m expecting a call,” I say, which I am.

“Ah.”

I get out and, after picking up the groceries, I slam the door shut and round the car, knocking on his window with my knuckles. He rolls the window down, and I say, “I’ll see you on Thursday, then, as usual?”

“Yeah.” He nods. “Don’t drown until then.”

“I’ll try not to,” I smirk, and he scoffs, rolling the window back up. He turns the car around as I get inside. The door isn’t locked because it doesn’t need to be. Not this far out from anything. We don’t get it at first, urban people like me, from Las Vegas to Los Angeles to New York, and now here. In cities we learn not to trust anyone. They’re all out to rob us or scam us or pull one on us, and we triple lock our doors and protect our property and will call the cops on you.

And then you move to a place with a population of – fuck. A thousand and then some? And you can leave your door unlocked. Because there are no strangers who might kill you in your sleep. There is no urban paranoia. And I kept my door locked for the first few months just in case, because you never know, maybe someone could track me down here and I’d wake up with a crazy female fan snuggling against me, but I’ve since ceased to lock the door. Learned to trust the unchanging nature of this place.

I fill up the kitchen cupboards with the canned meats and the liquor and then the fridge with the beer bottles. Only then do I flip through the mail that I picked up from the post office. The mailman would come this far out for me, but that’s alright. I’m in no hurry to do anything, and this way it’s safer.

I recognise Vicky’s handwriting on the back of an envelope: _G. Ross, General Delivery, Machias, ME, 04654_. We omit the actual address in all correspondence. Just in case. The other mail has typed addresses, so they are bound to be more boring. I decide to see what Vicky has to say first.

Her letter is brief, and I open one of the beer bottles and sit down by the kitchen table to read it.

_Ryan,_

_Can you not fucking move somewhere with reliable phone lines? Just a thought. You could die and I wouldn’t know for weeks, and you’d lie there rotting away with birds eating your insides. That’s what you get for living in the middle of nowhere._

_What I tried to say on the phone last week –_

Was it last week? Huh. The days just all blur together so nicely now.

_– was that Gabe called the office about some kid that was trying to ask him questions about you. I called Gabe. Unpleasant, but I did it. It turns out that it’s the same kid that tried to interview me last month. (I didn’t tell you about that, but you’re so paranoid that I thought it best to omit it.) It is likely that he might be trying to interview everyone from the old gang, I’m trying to find out who he’s bothered so far. He seems harmless, just a very devoted fan, but you never know. I’m looking into it, but if you could call me, that’d be fucking nice._

_We miss you in New York, you know._

_Don’t do anything fucking stupid._

_Love,  
Vicky_

I read the letter twice, unease stirring up in the back of my brain. Some kid’s going around asking awkward questions? Well, that’s no good. Even managing to get to Vicky or Gabe is worrying and more than the other ones have managed. I know I can’t disappear without anyone raising eyebrows, I know that there was no warning, I know that one day I was there and the next I wasn’t. People get curious.

But you’d think that they’d realise how I don’t want anyone trying to solve the mystery. If I had, I would have left clues.

The letter is dated to four days ago. I wonder if she has looked into it.

I open one of the beer bottles and drink half of it with one gulp. It doesn’t help.

I wish they’d leave me be.

The phone starts ringing just as I check the time, and it is five o’clock, and he is punctual as always. I head out to the living room and sit down on the large arm chair, sinking into it. I reach over to the side table and pick up the receiver. “Hey, man.” I take another slug of beer.

“I always half-expect you not to answer.”

“Thinking I’m dead? Yeah, Vicky does that same thing.”

“Hmm, more in vain hope of you having decided to rejoin humanity.”

“Humanity is overrated.”

“So are you.”

I scoff, although I hear the grin in Spencer’s voice. He launches into the weekly question round of what I’ve been doing, what I’ve been thinking, and I tell him at length and ask the same in return, and we get sidetracked and talk about our favourite English lagers and how some states now have pushed the legal drinking age to twenty-one, and how stupid is that because Spencer and I both would not have survived our teenage years without beer.

Eventually I say, “I got some bad news from Vicky.”

“Okay.” His voice is expectant, so I go on.

“Well, maybe not bad, but just not nice. Some kid’s going around asking questions about me.”

“Who’s he asking?”

“Gabe and Vicky, at least. Who knows?”

He is silent for a while, and I absently trace my thumb around and around the mouth of the now empty bottle.

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” Spencer says eventually. “We know how to keep our mouths shut.”

“Do we?”

Because there are rumours. All kinds of rumours. And not just about me and my disappearance, but also about other people affiliated with me. And that might not be my fault because some of us, well. Some of us seem to flaunt it. Make it into a marketing trick for their new and upcoming band. And that in itself reflects on me because I am associated, and it’s dodgy as it is, and so if someone goes stirring shit up and asks awkward questions... So I worry. I do get to worry, don’t I? It’s a bad idea, trying to dig up that stuff. It’s toxic. And not just for me, but for a lot of people. It can ruin reputations.

“I don’t care what they say about me, man.”

“That’s a lie.”

“Well, yeah, but you could let me get away with it,” I say. “I care less than I used to,” I then add, quietly. That at least is true. “So how’s the album doing now?”

He pauses when I ask this question, for a second, and I know what he’s thinking and not saying. That my curiosity isn’t healthy, that I shouldn’t be asking. The thousand little implications of even mentioning it, but we’d both rather not acknowledge those.

“Number four this week. Moved up two places.”

“Not bad for a debut album, is it?”

“Not at all, no. Our debut never made the top sixty, so they’re doing really well. Good for them.”

“Yeah.”

And I see him, then, somewhere out there, on stage, spotlight on him, so bright you can’t miss a single movement or smile or frown.

I see him, then, far removed from me, living a life on another plane of existence.

I see him. And Machias, ME, doesn’t feel far enough.

* * *

I call Clifton on Saturday because I’m bored and out of beer and my drawings have started to go from ‘not so bad’ to ‘really bad’. He comes in his pickup truck an hour later, and we head to the only bar in town. I get long looks from the locals, but they leave me be. A few of them greet me out of politeness, and I nod back.

We end up in a corner booth as usual, and I buy us beers. Clifton doesn’t like that, but he’s a mechanic scraping by whereas I am. Well. Not scraping by. Not financially, anyway.

We don’t have much to say, so he talks about cars again.

They’ve got the radio on. I used to listen to the radio a lot, too, but reception is bad out here, only a few stations that I don’t care for. Clifton keeps talking about exhaustion pipes as a new song starts, catchy and easy but with intelligent guitar hooks. And then the verse starts, a crisp voice belting out words confidently. The voice has got charisma and sex appeal, and the song is out of place in a small bar full of local men in their fifties, but the song sounds like it doesn’t care and is going to make you listen to it, anyway.

And so he finds me, via radio waves.

The song is good. It’s different from those few songs I heard him play back then, accidentally most of the time because he kept his music a secret. Didn’t think it was good enough. I guess I made him think that, selling platinum records and strutting around with my record deal while he was juggling various shitty jobs. I guess that his ex-boyfriend made him think that, arguing that his photography had more chances of a breakthrough than his music. And this song is good, but it sounds more... calculated. Commercial. Sounds a bit manufactured when compared to the raw intensity of his earlier work. Sounds like it’s about sex.

Maybe he polished his sound. Maybe it was polished for him.

It’s not my business anymore, but it’s thanks to me, you know. It’s all thanks to me that he’s out there singing songs.

His voice makes every hair on my body stand up. I sit still and let the song play, enduring the torture that someone’s sanctioned me.

Does he ever receive the same punishment, of hearing my voice on the radio unexpectedly?

He must.

* * *

He starts the call with, “Listen, man,” and then sighs. I can instantly tell something’s off. He calls me once a week – a surprise call means that something’s wrong. “I think this kid’s interviewed my mom.”

“What? He’s interviewed Ginger?” I ask, confused.  
  
“And Haley,” he then adds, and I get the visual of him grimacing just by the sound of his voice. This guy’s interviewed Spencer’s ex-wife? But how does he…? How has no one even…?

“He interviewed Haley,” I repeat, feeling oddly hollow.

“Tried to. She wouldn’t have any of it, you know how she is with fans and how protective of Suzie she is. But my mom, she never mentioned a word to me. Apparently this was way back last summer, but I compared the description of the guy with Haley’s and, Ry, it’s the same guy. Mom said he was lovely, just some kid. She invited him in for a tea and showed him childhood pictures, the whole nine yards.”

“Has your mother learned _nothing_ from your career?!” I ask, horrified of the thought of Ginger Smith spilling secrets about me to complete strangers.

“Don’t take it out on her, man. She thought he was just some fan, she didn’t know he was stalking all of your old crowds.”

“Still.” Ginger does not like me and never has. I don’t even want to know what she’d say about me when asked. “So this happened last summer. This kid has been interviewing people since _last summer_ and no one’s realised it until now? I’ve got the excuse of being up here on my own! How could you have possibly missed this?!”

It’s not Spencer’s fault, I know this, I know, I know, but this entire thing has escalated from unwanted yet harmless stalking to potentially catastrophic stalking. How big is this thing? How long has this been going on for? No one seems to know. No one.  
  
“How was I supposed to notice? I don’t talk to The Followers crowd anymore. I don’t keep in touch, you know that. And as for your New York crowd, you know they kind of scattered when you left.”

“But surely they still fucking talk,” I object before I realise that maybe they don’t. Vicky’s married now, has a kid, Patrick’s become a session musician, he moved to Los Angeles, Gabe’s gotten sucked into some never-ending, spiralling world of New York parties and drugs and booze, and Eric moved to London when his record store chain went transatlantic, and Jon –

Well. We all know what Jon did. And I’m not mad, I’m not, good for them. Both of them. I still talk to Jon. Or I would. It’s not like I am actively _not_ talking to him, but it’s awkward. It’s hard.

Spencer sighs heavily. “You were the one thing that kept things together, even when you were trying hard to rip things apart.”  
  
I bite on my bottom lip, my stomach sinking. “Don’t. Don’t make me feel guilty for bailing out on you guys.”  
  
Maybe it’s a pattern. Things get too tough and I run for it. But it’s not like it was with The Followers, when things got so dark that I was losing sight of myself. It didn’t get dark this time. It was all clear, oh so clear, in sunlight, everywhere. Reminders. Constant, constant reminders.

“I’m not trying to make you feel guilty, man,” he says apologetically. “Hey, whatever. Sure, I’d just gotten you back, but - Yeah, I know, I was there. I know. And we’re talking now. You didn’t bail on me, that’s not what I’m trying to say.”

“Okay.”

“And this thing with the kid will get taken care of. Don’t worry about it too much.”

“Okay.”

A pause. “I love you, man.”

“Yeah, I love you too.”

“Take care of yourself.”

Everyone always assumes that I don’t.

* * *

It feels like a hunt. Like the days just roll by, and the catastrophic proportions slowly dawn on us all.

I make a list of people that I can call or have someone else call. And it gets worse every day, like the world is shrinking, like a sniper’s rifle aiming at me. I start smoking obsessively, two packs a day when I was down to half a pack. My lungs burn like it doesn’t agree with the sudden change, but my body will learn to live with it.

The list is not very long at first: Gabe, Vicky, Ginger and Haley. Out of the three, it seems only Ginger indulged this kid.

But Vicky makes some calls, Spencer makes some calls, and I make some calls. And the list is suddenly a lot, lot longer.

Pete Wentz. I haven’t seen that fucker in years and don’t want to, but Pete Wentz, that weasel, quickly gets added onto the list. Vicky says that apparently the kid even stayed with Pete for a few days back in August. And then Jac Vanek. Hell. I have no idea what she’s up to these days. She works in fashion, I think, riding off of my fame. Ryan Ross’s ex-girlfriend is making hats for all of America. She’s doing pretty well, actually. She never was the type of girl to remain lying in the crossfire. And then Brent Wilson. We lost touch big time. No idea what he does. Maybe he’s pursued a career in professional assholeism. And the list also has a whole, whole handful of people from the early Followers crowd, people I have long since forgotten existed.

Some names are fresher. Keltie Colleen. A familiar sense of guilt rings in the back of my head at the mention of her name. She never deserved what... Well. There’s no use crying over spilt milk. Had I known, had I been able to see into the future... maybe Keltie and I would have turned out differently.

That is a lie, and I know it. Keltie and I were not a good match even when we were. She was a great girl, though. That’s all.

But the list gets longer, from acquaintances and short-term friends to former band members and managers and girlfriends. It’s an impressive list. I get a name too for this kid: Siska.

I bet he is glad now. This is probably what he wanted: for me to be aware of his existence.

Well I am.

I feel like I’m getting cornered in by an invisible force.

And yet I do not move.

* * *

The mail I get is always sent by Vicky’s people, and they always use the same anonymous looking brown envelopes. This one is white and the handwriting is messy, and I twist and turn the letter around outside the post office. A single car goes down the main road, which is mostly full of residential houses. The grocery shop is further down, and the bar is further up.

I pull the collar of my coat up and head along the street. It’s windy, the first of December. Frost is on the ground, crunching under my boots. I’m not used to this weather.

I hitchhiked to town but it took a forty minute walk to a bigger road to catch a ride. I couldn’t sleep this morning, and I couldn’t work on songs and I couldn’t listen to music and I couldn’t draw, and I felt restless. This entire business with this kid no one seems to be able to find. Is it too much to hope that he packed it in and went home?

After a long pale morning, a Scotch seems like a good idea. When I get to the bar and pull on the handle, however, the door doesn’t budge, and I realise that the bar’s not open yet. “Fuck,” I sigh, wiping at my numb nose.

The door opens, then, even with the ‘Closed’ sign hanging. Tommy, the guy who runs the bar, peers at me. “Oh, it’s you. What do you want?”

“A Scotch would be nice.”

He looks disapproving, but I make a show of shivering. He sighs. “Oh, alright, then.” He holds the door open for me, and I thank him kindly. He mutters something about unreliable spoiled rockstars under his breath, but he wouldn’t have let me in if he actually minded. On my third visit to his bar, he reluctantly asked if he could take my picture, saying it might boost sales. My picture now hangs behind the bar, me and Tommy shaking hands outside, awkward half-smiles on our faces.

I drop the pile of mail onto the table by the window, and Tommy says, “Don’t sit there. Do we want the sheriff to see me serving you out of hours?”

I roll my eyes when he’s got his back turned, moving to the back table instead. I take my jacket off as he brings a Scotch over. “Thanks, man.” He just scoffs and goes back to stocking up the bar.

I go through the familiar brown envelopes first, things I need to sign and send back, authorising the use of a Whiskeys’ song in some movie that’s coming up, another signing that I understand the few loose ends from my father’s will and so on. I don’t have a pen so I just go through the papers, fold them nicely and evenly, and then put them in my breast pocket to sign later.

Lastly, I open the white envelope. I don’t know why I save it for last but something about its unfamiliar appearance feels threatening.

There is a single piece of paper inside which I pull out and then I notice a rectangular piece of thicker paper still in the envelope. I tip the envelope, and a ticket drops onto the table, and then it’s there. A yellow concert ticket. Radio City Music Hall. 9th of December.

I stare.

I quickly reach for the note with a shaking hand, my eyes flying over the brief text: _In case you’re in town. – Jon_

Jon.

I drop the note, exhaling shakily. My eyes are glued to the ticket. An invitation. I take a big sip of Scotch. It burns my throat and warms me up, but it doesn’t calm me down.

Why would Jon send me a ticket when he knows? And is Jon operating on his own? Fuck, what does that mean? And what if I went? Does Jon want to see me or does someone else want to see me? Is _he_ aware that Jon’s invited me?

Suddenly, the questions are swirling in my head, creating chaos.

I’m not ready.

I picture myself backstage after the show to say hi to the band, squeezing Jon’s shoulder in approval, and then he’d be there, sweaty from the show, eyes widening at the sight of me.

God, I’m not ready.

And who says that it’s me who has to do the grovelling?

I never signed up for that. I put it all behind me.

But somehow it keeps catching up with me.

* * *

After further days of anxiety, Vicky tells me that it’s been taken care of.

“Let me tell you what I did,” she says, sounding amused. “So I finally hunt this kid down, right? He said he’s twenty but man, he looks like he’s seventeen. He’s this twitchy little overenthusiastic thing. And I have him brought into the office, and he’s babbling about how amazing it is to be in the headquarters of Asher Management – he’s floored, let me tell you. And I make him wait outside for two hours to, you know, make him know he’s not significant, and then I have him brought in. I’ve met him before, it’s the same kid that was waiting for me outside my apartment once, asking about you, of course. And so I ask him what the fuck he thinks he’s doing, right? And get this: he says he’s writing a book.”

“What?” I ask, bewildered.

“I swear to god that’s what he says. He’s writing a _book_. So I quickly go get our lawyers into the room, and he gets a grand speech on slander and privacy laws, and he’s pale by the end of it, trust me. _Legally_ , we would not be able to stop him from writing that book, but boy, did he lose interest. He’s just some crazy fan. I doubt he could string two words together on paper.”

“So he decided to back off?” I clarify.

“Yeah.”

“And that’s that? This kid is- is trying to write a book about me, he’s been interviewing people for months, but then he agrees to drop it just like that? What about his notes and all the things he might have found out, and –”

“We took his notes from him. We asked, and he just handed them over. There is absolutely nothing for you to worry about.”

I bite on my fingernails obsessively, trying to sink into the armchair as much as I can. I’ve got a fire roaring, keeping the room nice and warm. I still feel restless. Always restless. “And he went home.”

“He did. Chicago, I think. We caught this one pretty late, it’s true, but it’s been taken care of. He’s determined to forget whatever he happened to find out.”

I exhale, feeling myself relax a little. “Okay. Thanks, Vicky.”

The idea of a book, of guilty pages smeared with gossipy ink, sends a chill down my spine. It’s absurd – who would buy something like that? Who would even think it worth writing?

“Don’t worry about it. It gave me something to do. Have you any idea how boring this maternity thing is? The little poo machine just cries or sleeps. I mean, I love him to death, but my god babies are boring.”

“Shouldn’t have accidentally gotten knocked up, then.”

“Fuck you! My husband and baby are perfect.”

I laugh, the sound almost echoing in the living room. My thoughts stray to the hallway side table, its drawer, the white envelope that is hidden there. I bring my knees up, huddling together. “So I heard that, uh. That Jon’s band is playing Radio City.”

It’s not Jon’s band per se, but the euphemism serves its purpose.

“Yeah, they’ve kicked off their North American tour on the East Coast. A few of the shows have been sold out already. They’re doing really well.” She pauses as if to let me comment, but I don’t know what to say to that. “Why are you asking?”

I’ve started using Spencer as my confidante. Usually with Vicky I feign indifference.

“Jon sent me a ticket,” I then say.

“Oh. Are you going?”

“No,” I say instantly. “No. I just, like...” I sigh, card through my hair nervously. “Do you think... I mean. Do you think Jon sent it without consulting anyone?”

“You mean if Brendon knows that Jon invited you?”

I take in a deep breath, hating that something as insignificant as a piece of paper has thrown me off balance so much. “Yeah.” I rub my face. “Yeah, I suppose that’s what I mean.”

“I can’t know that. But forget about it. Because you’re thinking that if Brendon knows, maybe he wants to see you, or then again Brendon just might not care. And if Brendon doesn’t know, then it might be a set up, and it could get ugly. Jon’s not trying to play matchmaker, you know he’s not like that. So my _guess_ is that Jon just misses you, and I think that you should call him to say thanks but you won’t be able to attend. If you want, I can get the number of their next hotel. But don’t think about it too much, honey. That’s all done with. No reason to stir up something that’s dead and buried.”

Dead and buried, done with, yeah, I know. I tell myself that all the time.

But haunting. Does she understand that it’s haunting?

She wraps up the call when Baby Alexander starts crying. I go to the hallway, get the ticket and get my lighter, and then I stand in the kitchen, the flame flickering, the corner of the ticket hovering not too far from the fire.

I look at the ticket, read _His Side_.

Yeah, what about mine? What about all the wrong that was done to me?

I pocket the lighter and drop the unburned ticket onto the kitchen table. A stupid piece of paper that changes nothing.

* * *

The weather is horrible in the morning, just like it was the night before. Staying in bed seems like a good idea, and I pull the covers over my head and try to get back to sleep but it’s in vain. I put a record on, my bare feet on the Oriental rug that matches the heavy satin curtains. They help to keep the place warm. 40s blues comes on, and I light a cigarette, pull on jeans and grab one of my sketchbooks. I start with arms this time, and it’s a little boy that I’m trying to draw, one with messy hair and a wicked grin, afraid of nothing, not having lost anything. I wonder if it’s a kid I’ve seen in town or if he’s just a figment of my imagination.

I’m working on his mouth when a song finishes, and I stop. Frown. I hear noise from downstairs, a thump. It’s barely noon and there’s a strong wind throwing snow around outside, but that was not the sound of the wind battering the house. That sound came from the inside.

I throw a shirt on as I head downstairs to investigate, buttoning it up as I go. The stairs creak as I try to figure out if one of the picturesque seaside paintings has come falling down or maybe –

Someone’s in the living room. A young man is in the living room. Standing in the middle with his back to me, a thick winter coat on and an old brown leather satchel hanging on him. He’s looking around the room curiously. He has a messy, curly entanglement of brown hair on his head.

“Who are you?” I ask, and the kid jumps, _literally_ jumps, and he swirls around and freezes.

“Ryan Ross,” he breathes out, his boyish face as white as the snow outside.

“Yes, that’s who _I_ am, thanks, but that’s not what I was asking.”

He’s not some random hiker who got lost, but I don’t recognise him from about town either.

“T-The door wasn’t locked.” He motions to the hallway with a shaking hand, eyes unnaturally wide.

“No. It’s not an invitation to come in either, though.”

“I- I’m sorry. It was just... cold outside. I cycled in from Machias. I got lost a few times.” His voice is hollow, though, like he’s not really aware of what he’s saying – he’s far too busy staring at me. A state of shock. “Wow, your hair’s gotten really _long_. It’s _never_ been that long.”

And I know what that means.

“You’re a fan,” I say in realisation. My hair that brushes my shoulders isn’t that long. Not really.

But here is a kid saying otherwise. Longer than ever. Here is some fan who’s cycled from Machias in a snow storm, helped himself into my house, who _knows_ where I fucking live. And then I take in his face: two overly enthusiastic, sparkling eyes even as he is clearly shocked, slightly hollow cheeks, dirt road brown hair that’s naturally curly but relatively short, and he looks fucking tired but awed and like he’s about to faint.

It matches a description I’ve heard before.

“Fuck. Are you that fucking kid who’s been bothering everyone I’ve ever known?”

He frowns. “No. No, I don’t believe that’s me. I don’t _bother_ people, I –”

“You’re that guy writing a book about me.”

“A biography!” he says happily. “A biography. Yes. Yeah. I’m Sisky. Call me Sisky. Your biographer.” He grins madly. “You know about me. God. You _know_ about me. Oh gosh. I’m so – Gosh.”

I try to deal with this intrusion and shock. I thought Vicky sent him home – clearly not. Instead he managed to find out where I live. And he just decided to pay a visit. If I had a fucking shot gun...

“Look, kid, you’re not my fucking anything.”

“That’s not true.”

“Cute. _Listen_. I have no idea how the hell you tracked me down, but clearly you have some issues. Okay, here I am, in my home, alive and well. And now I’m gonna call the sheriff to kindly escort you out of town. And because I’m feeling charitable, I’m not suing you for trespassing this time. Alright? So now turn around and fuck off. You’ve had your fun, and this stupid little project of yours is over.”

He has been having fun, too. I’ve been losing sleep over this mysterious being chasing me – him. This short, tiny eager kid staring at me with devout admiration, but now clearly with hurt too.

“Mr. Ross, I came up here because those people in New York told me to stop! I realised that I had to come straight to you, because they didn’t get it, but you do! And I need to interview you for the book, I need to...” He frantically goes through his satchel and pulls out a paper and pen. He then stares up at me joyously like _now_ he’s ready, now he can write down everything I say.

“Are you on drugs?” I ask disbelievingly and approach him. His eyes widen like having me this close is surreal to him. “Here, let me help you.” I place a hand on his shoulder and then push him back into the hallway. He staggers, craning his neck to look at me, clearly upset.

“We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot!”

“We haven’t gotten off at all.”

“I’m not some stalker!”

“I beg to disagree.”

“Mr. Ross!” He breaks free of my hold and swirls around, pressing himself against the wall by the front door like that will make it harder for me to move him. “You need to hear me out.”

“No. I don’t.”

I open the door, grab his shoulder and push him out into the cold, the wind ruffling both of our hairs. He looks crestfallen.

“Go home, kid,” I say and slam the door to his face. He instantly knocks on it. I lock it. He twists the doorknob. He knocks again.

“Mr. Ross! I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to barge in on you!” Knock, knock. “...Ryan? It’s really cold out here!”

I lean against the door and slide down it to sit on the floor, exhaling heavily. Jesus. Jesus fucking Christ.

“I’m not going!” he then exclaims. I rub my face tiredly and fight off a headache. “Are you calling the cops on me? Please don’t call the cops on me! Oh man... I’ve lost my hat. It’s cold. Please, Mr. Ross?”

He bangs again, his voice still muffled.

My life is fucking absurd. The sheriff doesn’t even like me, but he will come and collect the kid, I’m sure. Escort him out of town, glare at him and threaten to call his parents. Someone like that should not be left wandering around America without some kind of parental guidance.

I feel a thud against the door, but it’s not knocking this time. It feels like he’s sliding down to sit on the porch.

“I just thought I’d set the record straight,” he says, now mumbling to himself, words muffled but decipherable. “You don’t know what they say about you. They say such horrible things. But you’re not like that. I know you’re not really like that.” He sounds choked up.

My mind goes over the people he’s definitely managed to get something out of: Brent, Pete, Jac, Keltie... Well, shit. They won’t have anything good to say, will they?

“Fuck,” he swears, his voice breaking, and the wind blows loudly enough to drown it out but I get a horrible feeling that now the kid is crying. I quickly get up to get away from the door, the realisation making me uncomfortable. I’ll give it five minutes, and he can pick himself up and go home. It’s not my business. It’s not my concern. It’s not my fault if some fan is disappointed in me, if he went in search of his idol only to discover that he didn’t deserve to be worshipped.

I’ve done a lot of bad things, but his shattered dream is not one of them.

I go into the kitchen, put the kettle on. Draw the curtains to the backdoor in case he decides to circle the house. Never mind. Forget about it.

Another knock on the door. I ignore it. He keeps knocking and calls out something I can’t make out, so I reluctantly and slowly move from the kitchen to the living room and then to the hallway. I stare at the door like I would at a ticking time bomb. “Mr. Ross!” his voice calls out. “I, uh. Did you call the cops or not? Because if you did, I’ll just wait here if that’s alright. At least I’ll get a ride back into town!”

I stare at the door in bewilderment and then laugh. This utter embodiment of a failure has been the person hunting down all of my old enemies? I can’t believe it. My life has turned into a bad joke. Not saying that it wasn’t one before, but this? This is something else.

“I just wanted to tell the truth. That’s all,” he then calls out.

The water is boiling, the kettle letting out a whistle in the kitchen. I stare at the door intently. Mull this over.

When I open the door, the kid flinches, not having expected it. He stares at me expectantly, blinking too much with puppy eyes.

“Come the fuck in, then.”

“To wait for the cops?”

“I didn’t call them.”

“Oh!” His expression lights up like I’ve just told him he’s won the lottery. His eyes then narrow. “Then what for?”

“I don’t – know, I – Look, just come the fuck in from the cold, alright?”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Do you think I would?”

“No!” he then laughs and saunters back in rather confidently. He drops his satchel and starts unbuttoning his coat and starts talking a million miles per minute. “Are we having tea why do you live out here is it always so cold do you live alone I think you’ve got nice views –”

I stare at him in astonishment. This house has never heard so much speech in one day, let alone a week.

Maybe murder isn’t off the list completely.

* * *

“Is that boat out there yours?”

“No.”

“So do you ever go fishing?”

“No.”

“Hiking?”

“No.”

“Swimming?”

“No.”

“...Walking?”

“No.”

He’s frowning. He looks around the room living room. “So, you just... stay in all day, doing what?”

“Reading. Drawing. Thinking. Sometimes I think about walking.”

“You’ve got a lot of books,” he amends, nodding towards the full bookcases. His Dictaphone is on the table between us. He’s brought in one of the kitchen chairs and is now sitting on it, opposite my armchair. I’m armed with a beer bottle and feel horribly out of place. It’s not an actual interview, I keep telling myself. I’m letting this kid have his go at me, and then he will be happy and can piss off. “What kind of stuff do you read?”

“Poetry, I suppose. Like –”

“W.H. Auden!” he interrupts, beaming. “You quote his _Funeral Blues_ in one of your songs, _708_? You know how you quote him?”

“...Yeah. I do know.”

“Yeah. Man, that’s great. At first I was confused because, like, it’s a love song, right, but then the Auden poem’s about a dude, so I was like ‘what?’ but then how you just referenced the loss, you know, compared it with death. That’s some amazing, deep stuff. So powerful.” He stares at me dreamily.

“Uh.”

He blinks. “So who is _708_ about?”

That answers at least one question I’ve had concerning him: he doesn’t know. For all his digging around, he doesn’t know. I’m surprised. Jac didn’t rat me out? Brent didn’t? Wow. That’s... almost kind.

“Look,” I say, wanting to distract him. “I said that I’d set the record straight, answer your silly questions. I thought I’d deny some nasty rumours, right? So let’s just focus on those.”

Sisky looks at his notes. Vicky told me that they had confiscated them – lies. Sisky handed over _copies_ of his notes. What a sneaky little thing. Sisky might seem harmless, but he’s not. He’s dangerous. He’s cunning. Makes it all the more worrying that he plans to write a book about me, but I haven’t agreed to that. I’ll set lawyers on him, find some dirt on him, blackmail him, something to get him to stop. But for now I’ll sit here and answer his stupid questions because god knows he won’t go away otherwise.

“We could start at the beginning.” He looks up. “Tell me about your childhood.”

“I was born in 1950. I grew up in Vegas. I was an only child.”

“I know all that.” He sounds very unimpressed.

I frown. “Well what do you –”

“You’re stating facts. I need anecdotes! I need you to tell me what you _did_ , how you felt. Not the name of your first grade teacher – Mr. Buckner, by the way – but what you thought about him. Like, here. Okay here,” he says, now looking at his notes. “Ginger Smith. She describes you as a quiet, anti-social child. You were talkative with people you knew, like Spencer, but when she walked into the room you’d quiet down. During your teenage years, she says that you became quieter, but also stubborn. You seemed like a thinker. She thought you exhibited aggressive behaviour. Just seemed angry. Later you became arrogant.” Sisky looks up. “Do you think that’s accurate?”

“No.” Quiet but still stubborn, aggressive and arrogant?

“Okay, what’s your best childhood memory?”

“Uh...” I rake through my brain. “My ninth birthday, I guess.”

“Tell me about it.”

“No!” I object, confused. I don’t need to tell him anything. Sisky again looks rather unimpressed. He clearly worships me in some way, and he’s nervous, sure, but I think I am pretty quickly helping him to get rid of his inhibitions. Well, considering he has travelled this country far and wide, interviewing people, he clearly never had many inhibitions to begin with.

“You need to give me something. Why does that birthday stand out?”

“The old lady next door baked a fucking cake. Happy now?”

“Did you usually get cake for your birthday?”

“No.”

“Your father wasn’t very affectionate, was he?”

“No.”

“And how did that make you feel?”

“Are you my shrink?” I ask disbelievingly. He instantly writes something down. I’m affronted.

“You and Spencer worked as paper delivery boys to get money for your instruments, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“Was that your first ever job?”

“Yes.”

“What was your first guitar?”

“A 1960 Martin D-18. Bought it second-hand. I still have it.”

“You used it on _708_!” he beams, again accurately. “I didn’t know that was your first.” He writes it down happily. “Is it true that you refused to play that song live?” He glances at me quickly. “Why? Too personal? It seems like one of your most personal songs. Is it about Keltie? How did you meet Keltie? Is it true you cheated on her? _708_ seems to reference an affair, so is it about your mistress? Who was she? Were there several? Would you describe yourself as ‘sexually daring and promiscuous’?” He smiles at me. “That’s a quote from Keith Dixon.”

“Who?”

“Keith Dixon? Your old drum tech.”

“Big Keith!” I say in realisation. “How the hell did you find Big Keith? Fuck, I haven’t seen him in... five, six years. How is he these days?”

“He’s found Jesus,” Sisky says solemnly.

“Oh.”

When we decided to check whom Sisky had talked to, we asked the most obvious people. Sisky’s scope, however, has been far greater than that. He’s not ignoring all the people I’ve forgotten.

Funny. They remember me, but I don’t remember them. For how many people is that true for? Hundreds of insignificant handshakes that have meant the world to them and nothing to me.

“Is it true you and Joe had a bet on which one of you could sleep with more girls on your ’72 tour?” he now asks hesitantly. Yes. We did. We were young, famous and no one was there to tell us not to.

“No. Absolutely not.”

He looks at me sceptically but then writes something down.

“Look, is there any logic to this? You keep jumping from one thing to another,” I complain. From my songs to my childhood to Keltie to who I’ve been fucking.

“Well, you’re not answering any of my questions!” We glare at each other. How dare he glare at me? I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve been kind enough to let him in, to _indulge_ him, and here he is glaring like I’m letting him down. “What would _you_ like to talk about?” he then asks.

“The music,” I say easily. That’s the only thing worth talking about.

“Okay.” He starts chewing on the end of his pen. “What exactly happened to The Followers?”

“Life,” I shrug.

“Okay. And by ‘life’ you mean...?” He arches an eyebrow. I shrug again. “Okay, see, I’ve heard different accounts of the break up, and it all seems dodgy to me. What really happened that summer? What about the car crash?”

“You’re not asking about the music.”

“But I am! What about The Whiskeys? Why did you quote retire unquote last year? All of a sudden, when you were more successful than ever? Who retires at a time like that? Why was there supposed to be a documentary of The Whiskeys but the project got scrapped last second? Why are you living out here in the middle of nowhere when you’re one of the most famous musicians alive? I mean. Surely you _understand_ why I’ve been interviewing people! It doesn’t add up. _You_ don’t add up!”

“Look, I don’t owe you anything, kid.”

“You do! You owe the world an explanation! You owe _me_ one!”

Well someone’s taking this personally.

“I can’t help you.”

His brows knit together angrily, and although I’ve only known him for a very short time, it looks uncharacteristic on him. He stands up. “I’m going for a walk,” he announces. “We’ll try again when I come back.” He marches out into the hall and puts his coat back on, buttoning it hastily. He glares at me from the doorway, and fuck. He was all sunshine and puppies when he first arrived, but now he seems to hate my guts. How did I manage that in such short a time? I was being damn considerate! “In the meanwhile you should consider the fact that I can’t interview you if you don’t want to talk,” he declares, and he sounds hurt like I’ve somehow betrayed him. I roll my eyes at my beer bottle, and then my eyes move to the stack of notes on the coffee table.

However, he seems to have the same thought as me because he hurries back into the living room, grabs his satchel, stuffs it full of his notes, and then hurries back out with a hurt look my way. The front door opens and closes.

Well.

He’s a bit insane.

I slowly get up and walk to the big window. Sisky’s marching onto the beach, shoulders hunched. The storm has quieted down but it’s still windy. He clearly wants to make a statement. His footsteps mix sand and light snow together.

I light a cigarette and pick up the phone, dialling Spencer’s number. He and I have been talking more frequently now because of Sisky. I suppose that’s one good thing that’s come out of this mess.

Spencer replies after a few rings and I say, “So the kid is here.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Yeah. I told him to piss off.”

“Good!”

“And then I let him back in and let him interview me.” I suck on my cigarette greedily, estimating the silence on the line.

“I – Wha – _Why?_ ”

“He’s not giving up. He found me, man. I’ll give him his dream interview and then send him home.”

“I don’t know,” he says sceptically, and I know it probably won’t be that easy. But the kid said it himself, didn’t he? That I can’t even begin to imagine the things people say about me. If I don’t talk, he might just go ahead and write that goddamned book of his based on faulty information that demonises me. I mean, clearly it’d be a lie. Because I’m not a horrible person. I have never done anyone wrong.

Yeah. Sure I haven’t.

“He can’t force secrets out of me,” I then say to reassure us both. I glance towards the window again, just in case the kid’s back with his face pressed against the glass. “And he doesn’t know much to begin with.”

“So he doesn’t know about...?”

“No.” I pause, then, take in a deep breath. “But all those things we don’t talk about? Yeah, those are the ones he wants to talk about.”

“How do you plan to distract him from those, then?”

I sigh heavily, shrugging although Spencer can’t see. “Not sure yet. Lie. Cheat. Distract him.”

All the usual stuff.

* * *

I fix us dinner later on that evening, having shown Sisky to the unused guest room where he can stay for tonight. Just tonight. His room faces the front of the house and the beach whereas my bedroom is at the back, and it’s not that much space that’s between us and I can only hope that I don’t wake up in the middle of the night to see Sisky watching me sleep.

It’s not healthy if your heart fills with a calming sensation just from watching him sleep. Knowing that he’s safe. That does you no good.

“Are you going?” Sisky asks from behind me. I remain by the cooker, stirring the soup. One can of tomato soup, the other chicken soup, straight from cans. I’m fairly certain that it’s okay to mix different types of soups together. It’ll bring in different flavours or something. I don’t know. I’ve never had to cook until I moved out here. “It’s tomorrow night. New York’s far away.”

“What?” I glance over my shoulder.

He’s holding the ticket to the His Side show. He hasn’t been his happy-go-lucky self since he walked out earlier – he seems to be sulking. I’ve got half a mind to throw him out for good. I don’t need some fan guilt-tripping me.

“I’m not going.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m busy.”

“...Busy with what?” He looks around the empty kitchen, frowning.

“Stuff,” I say defensively. The soup has started to boil, so I pour it into the two bowls that I’ve set on the counter. It’s a brown-pinkish colour, like someone’s vomit with processed chicken chunks in it. Sisky looks unimpressed by it when I set it in front of him. I snatch the ticket from his greedy little hands and tear it in two. He looks surprised. I pocket the pieces and breathe out shakily.

Well, that’s it, then. That’s that.

I sit down and grab a spoon. “Eat,” I order him.

He starts stirring the soup with his spoon, eyeing it with mild disgust. “So you discovered Brendon, right? The singer of His Side? Everyone knows you did. All the interviews of them say so.” If he knows this, why is he fact-checking with me? I only do a half-shrug that’s as good as admission. “But you’re not going to see them on their first tour. Huh. One would expect you to care about your own creation.”

“Not my creation,” I say, blowing on a spoonful of soup before swallowing it down. It doesn’t taste half bad.

“And Jon’s in that band, too. You and Jon were pretty close, right?”

“I suppose.”

“Is that why you’re not going? Because you’re angry Jon jumped ship?”

“Why would I blame him for that? It was sinking, anyway.”

He hums but doesn’t look like he buys what I’m saying. If he thinks Jon is my problem with His Side, I’ll let him think just that.

He’s playing with his food. I feel the urge to tell him to stop it, like I’m his mother and he’s a disobedient child. “They’re a good band,” he then says to himself quietly. “Not genius like anything you’ve done, but they’re good. I love their album. That Brendon Roscoe is damn charismatic.”

I stare at my soup and listen to the grandfather clock in the living room ticking. “You ever met him?”

“No. I’ve seen him, though. With you.”

A sudden chill runs through me. Maybe he’s been playing me, beating around the bush when he knows.

“On the Diamonds and Pearls tour,” he then says. “I just saw him around. I didn’t really put the two together until recently. Now that he’s all famous.”

“Oh. But you saw him with the band.”

He nods. “With you, yeah.” He takes a spoonful of the soup, makes a face and pushes the plate away from himself. I try not to be offended that my culinary skills do not impress him, but mostly I wonder where he saw us. What he saw. At what point. Did he see us before he had left me or before he lied to me, saying that I had a chance, or maybe after that, when he left me again. Played me. Like a fucking puppet. An insignificant little fucking thing.

I laid it all out there for him, and he just –

I realise that I’m squeezing my spoon too hard, like I’m trying to murder it. I loosen my grip slightly, embarrassed because I think Sisky noticed. The soup, I have to admit, is not particularly tasty, and I give up forcing it down and push it away like Sisky did.

I scratch my nose and take in what he said. That he saw Brendon on the tour. How exactly? If you’re standing in the crowd, you wouldn’t have seen Brendon. No, you’d need to break beyond that barrier and catch a glimpse of what goes on backstage.

“Have we ever met?” I now ask him and, for the first time since his arrival, Sisky seems truly taken aback. He’s been fidgeting and overly enthusiastic and hurt looking and then sulking and playing the martyr, but now he looks uncomfortable.

“Does it matter?” he asks, sounding... defensive. He won’t look at me.

“I’m curious.”

“No. We never have.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” he almost snaps, and I smirk. So that’s his deal.

“How many times have we met?”

His mouth forms a thin line. “Four.” Then, “Depends on how you count, I suppose.”

“And how do you count?”

He seems unnerved that the tables have turned, and now I’m the one interviewing him. “Well, I don’t count... seeing you. Because I’ve seen you plenty. But this one time you shook my hand. That was number one. Once you signed my album just before you got back on the tour bus. That’s two. Once Melvin and I bumped into The Followers in one of your hotels and you looked at me, so that was three. And then. Then on the Diamonds and Pearls tour, Gold and I were in one of the hotels, and you, uh. Gold was at the reception, I was in the sitting area, and you just came over and bummed a cigarette off of me. You were upset about something. I don’t know. You barely even looked at me. I could hardly understand what you said, I was just awed at you sitting there.” He looks lost in the memory, but his tone is slightly bitter. “You just. You didn’t know, man. You sat there, and you clearly just didn’t know what you meant to us. To people like me, people who followed The Followers and later just you. We thought you were guiding us, but you were just stumbling blind. And the funny thing is that... when I started this project, you were such a godlike figure. But you’re just a man. Flaws and all.”

“Disappointing, eh?”

“No,” he says. “Confusing. But not disappointing. It’s almost comforting.”

My tone was sarcastic because I thought he was complaining that I didn’t live up to his unrealistic expectations, but he says he’s not disappointed, surprising me.

“I thought that everything would make sense once I started digging around. But the more I did, the more confusing it was. There was no master plan in your head when you started with your music, there was no ultimate message like we thought. But I’m not... mad that I believed in something that you hadn’t crafted because it was real to _me_. And I guess that’s what matters, right? That you gave me something to believe in when I needed it.”

“Music’s the only thing I’ve ever believed in,” I say solemnly, and he nods slowly. We fall into silence, but it’s not that awkward or tense silence from before. I feel like we’re on the same page for the first time.

I’ve met him several times but I don’t remember him and he meant nothing to me. Whereas to him, I must have been it. His purpose for so many things.

“I’m more interested than ever in what you have to say,” he says eventually. “I’m not expecting it to be pretty. By now, I know it’s not. I just...” He sighs restlessly, twisting his hands. “I just want to know what happened. And why. Because people try to tell me what _they_ think you were thinking, and let me tell you, they all contradict each other. And maybe I was wrong earlier, maybe _you_ as you are here, sitting in this kitchen, maybe this you doesn’t owe me anything. But the one I saw on that stage does. He owes me. I spent my youth listening to that man.”

“But he didn’t ask you to.”

“I know. But if he didn’t want anyone to listen, why did he say anything at all?”

It’s not often someone manages to corner me in an argument as quickly as he’s just done. I don’t know what to say to that that wouldn’t be an obvious lie.

“Okay, how about this,” I say slowly. “I have the right to not answer if I don’t want to, but... I’ll tell you. Without that Dictaphone recording everything. I’ve been interviewed hundreds of times, man, and I’m so sick of it. But... We can talk. As people.”

He considers this, brows knitting together. “As people,” he repeats.

“About the music and the bands. My private life’s private. But we can talk about the music.”

“As people,” he says once more.

We can try.

He nods eventually, though. “Okay. We can do that.” And then he smiles – not quite as wildly as when he first waltzed in, but he smiles, anyway. His eyes sparkle just slightly, and that. Makes me feel good. That I’ve restored some of his faith to whatever I once made him believe in.

“Now eat your damn soup,” I order.

“I’ll make us some real food,” he declares, but ten minutes later, we’re munching on buttered toast. He says, “I’ll have to make some changes around here.”

I’d like to see him try.


	2. (Radio) Waves

I manage to dodge the actual ‘conversation as people’ for a few good days. They also are a very odd few days.

I’m not used to having someone in the house, not used to the constant presence of another person. Not that it’s constant because I send him out to find the perfect shell to put on the kitchen sill or to cycle into town for more beer or _something_ to get him off my back because he doesn’t understand much about breathing space. But sometimes he stops talking, asks me to recommend a book, and then we sit in the living room reading late into the evening, and then he asks why I recommended the book that he’s reading.

He’s not taking notes. I hated that. Made me feel like a specimen to be examined.

Clifton doesn’t get it at all when he picks me up on Thursday as usual. Sisky squeezes into the pickup truck with us, and Clifton peers at him in confusion and asks, “Who’s the kid?”

Sisky leans over, smiling madly (he’s gotten those grins back now). “Sisky. Ryan’s biographer!”

“His _what_?”

“Goddammit Sisky, I thought we agreed –”

“Ooh, can I change the radio station?”

Sisky twists the knob, looking for another frequency. Clifton stares at me, eyebrow disbelievingly arched, and I feel slightly embarrassed because I know that he thinks my fame is a worthless commodity.

“He’s not my biographer,” I tell Clifton, not looking him in the eye.

“Sure,” Clifton says, but the sarcasm rolls off his tongue, and it’s an awkward ride into town.

In the grocery store, Sisky goes crazy. I usually buy canned foods, cigarettes and alcohol. He, however, pulls out a shopping list and asks if I prefer Pink Ladies to Granny Smiths. I dig out cash from my pocket, hand him bills and tell him to just remember the booze and cigarettes, and then opt out and go to Tommy’s bar with Clifton.

“So who is that kid?” Clifton asks as we drink beer in our usual table.

“Some fan, you know.”

“And you’re letting him stay with you? God, that’s self-absorbed.” He rolls his eyes.

But he doesn’t get it. He doesn’t understand the power of music, how Sisky and I are connected in some messed up way. Because Sisky was right – I wanted someone to hear what I had to say. Now, I’m not saying that Sisky understood anything of what I had to say, but he thought he got it. And maybe that’s what matters.

“Maybe in my next life I’ll be an underachiever,” I tell Clifton. “I’ll be a mechanic in some dead ass northeastern town and never mingle with celebrities in exclusive New York clubs as fans line up for twelve hours to see me on stage.”

He scoffs. He’s the kind of guy who’ll bite easily but never follows through.

Sisky asks Clifton all kinds of questions on the way home – essentially interviewing him. How long have we known each other, how did we meet, what he thinks of me. Clifton looks beyond uncomfortable and says that he met me some six months ago, shortly after I bought the house, and he seems happy when we’re back at the house and Sisky gets out of the car.

Sisky takes grocery bags from the truck bed and hurries inside from the cold. We watch him go.

“He’s a handful,” Clifton observes. “Does he even shut up long enough to sleep?”

“He does. He sleeps in the guest room.”

“Right.” He rubs his nose slightly. “Not coming in for a beer, I don’t think. But maybe next week. Will he be gone by next week?”

“I don’t know. I’ll call you.”

“You do that.”

I get out of the car, but Clifton says, “Hey,” pointing at the latest issue of Rolling Stone that’s now on the passenger seat. I grab it quickly before slamming the door shut. I’m surprised the shop had the magazine – probably the only copy they send to Machias. The cover promises to reveal the secret life of Steve Martin – but he’s an actor, what the hell – and to shed light on Keith Richards. I roll it up as I get into the house, where Sisky is banging the cupboards in the kitchen. He said that he’s cooking tonight (like he does every night, to be fair), so I drop the magazine onto the living room coffee table and head upstairs to listen to music.

I keep the record player in my bedroom, not the living room, and Sisky’s got enough sense to realise that my bedroom is my kingdom and he’s not invited. He did go through my record collection, however, under my very watchful eye. He knew almost all of them, even the obscure blues records. I was impressed, I have to admit.

I lie down in bed and listen to Muddy Waters and how he just wants to make love to his girl. Or boy. Hell, it’s not like he specifies, and god knows you can make love to both. But I don’t want to follow that thought any further because it’d do me no good, so I focus on the music, my eyes closing. It’s like escaping to another world, Muddy’s world, and I visualise myself by the Mississippi River in the forties, humid night air, darkness all around us and insects buzzing in our ears, and we’re gathered on the porch of some sad little house with our guitars out, singing the blues.

I wonder if I could have been happy in that world. If I would have been different. Happier. Better.

I think so. Sisky said something yesterday, that a childhood of neglect has made me despise the attention that I crave for. That was just one of those pseudo-intellectual psychological observations that he says to seem smart, and I don’t think he even bought what he said, but... In this dream blues world of my own Mississippi and my huge family – where I’m a tall, lean, handsome black man – being so rooted to that place and those people and singing out on the porch about my baby girl who left town.

I could have been happy there.

I could have been happy in a dozen different versions of life.

But this is the one I got. The one I cannot change.

And when I realise that this is it, I nearly panic. Feel so guilty. Trace my steps and think what a damn mess I’ve made of it. Some people have changed the world for the better by the time they’re twenty-eight, you know. They have families and children and they got a PhD on some electric impulse in the brain that causes some kind of a horrible syndrome but because of their research it’s now cured. They can die tomorrow without that dread of a failure.

Whereas me... If I died tomorrow, people would mourn. Fans like Sisky would mourn. My old bandmates would mourn, and all the radio stations would play my songs and the record sales would skyrocket and then they’d show documentaries of my life on TV for the next fifty years – they’re already doing that with Jimi – and I would not be forgotten, no. But would I have truly earned it? Dying here, in this house that’s just a place of refuge, with silly, distant hopes of being repatriated someday when I’ve gotten over it? Over him? Having alienated most of my friends and lovers with only the most patient and understanding ones left?

Would that give me glory?

And the funeral would be awkward as everyone would struggle to put two nice words of me together. They’d say, “He changed the world with his music,” but did I? Can music truly change the world? Because we sing songs of protest and we sing songs of defiance, but as far as I can see, the same shit keeps happening.

So sometimes I do wonder if all this music is just a new form of painkillers. Doesn’t get rid of the source, but lets us think that it will get better.

“Knockity knock!” Sisky chirps from the now open door. “Dinner’s ready.” He smiles at me brightly. The record’s stopped playing at some point. I sigh and get up.

He’s made us a relatively simple meal of chicken and rice with some sweet corn on the side, but it’s still the most refined and tastiest meal I’ve had in months. I don’t tell him that, though, even when he stares at me from across the table with expectant eyes. “It’s alright,” I grant, and he relaxes and seems happy.

The Rolling Stone is on the table, and I know he’s been reading it because he points at the cover and says, “You know The Sex Pistols?”

“I know of them.”

“You know that Sid Vicious killed his girlfriend?”

“No shit.” I think I did hear about that, Vicky or Spencer mentioned it. Bad press for rebellious musicians in general.

“It happened just recently in the Chelsea Hotel. It’s in New York.”

A piece of chicken gets stuck in my throat, and I cough to get it down. I look at the magazine like it’s just offended me, but in my mind’s eye I see the long corridors with their Oriental styled carpets, and then the rooms with the expensive furniture, with a bit of Victorian fireplace, a bit of art deco armchair, and then the bed, the big bed with those soft sheets and a headboard to hold onto when –

“You lived there, didn’t you?” Sisky asks while casually popping rice into his mouth, but I freeze. Stare at him.

“How do you know that?” I ask, alarmed. He shrugs. “No. How do you know that?”

No one knew that. No one except Brendon and Vicky, and I think Gabe knew, and later Keltie found out. Sisky is not supposed to know that. No one is.

Sisky grins at me sheepishly. “I talked to a girl who worked as a receptionist in the recording studio when you were working on _Wolf’s Teeth_. She told me that sometimes she had to pass on messages left for you to the Chelsea Hotel. Vicky’s orders, she said.” He cuts another piece of chicken. “So why did you stay there? I mean, your SoHo apartment was closer to the studio than the hotel.”

I take in a calming sip of beer, soothed by his ignorance. He doesn’t know how close he is to knowing all the worst secrets I’ve got.

“There’s something comforting about hotel rooms,” I say eventually. I’m not even lying to him. “They’re so... artificial. You don’t need to be a real person when you stay there. You can forget about yourself. About the world outside.” But you need to be damn careful that you don’t forget too much.

I go back to eating, but thinking of Sid ending his girlfriend’s life in that hotel has made me lose my appetite. Somehow it feels personal. How dare he do something like that in a place that was so significant to me? How dare he taint it with death and violence?

“A lot of loving and fighting and fucking goes on in that hotel. Murder, though. Fuck the kids these days. Murder. Is that the new definition of rock ‘n roll? Is that the ultimate manifestation of punk? Fuck them. Fuck that arrogance. How dare they?”

Sisky looks incomprehensive but nods like he fully agrees, anyway. He’s almost done with his food now, eating quickly like he always does. He flips through the pages of the magazine with his other hand while I push rice around the plate, feeling angered. That something so evil happened in a place where my best memories took place. Because they still are the best ones, even with all the blood on them.

“Here,” Sisky now says, pointing at a spreading. “I bought it for this.” He turns the magazine around and pushes it across the table. _His Side At Our Side_ and, beneath the poor pun title, _Ryan Ross’s disciple band take on North America on their first ever tour_. There’s a large picture of the band, five people in it: there’s Jon in the left corner, smiling contently, next to him is a good-looking, tall guy with brown hair and a confident grin, then in the middle is Brendon, standing slightly closer to the camera than the rest but I don’t look at him, can’t bring myself to, and so I look at Ian on his right, his messy brown curls still all over, and on Ian’s other side is some well-built blond guy that I don’t know either. I hum to let Sisky know that I’ve seen the article and then push the magazine back across the table. Sisky frowns. “Aren’t you going to read it?”

“No.”

Sisky huffs but then busies himself reading it. I focus on finishing my dinner.

“Oh, cool!” he says soon like he really wants me to ask what’s cool, but I don’t take the bait. “They’re covering you on their tour,” he informs me. “They do _Miranda’s Dream_.”

Brendon is covering a Followers song?

I feel at a loss from the news, something setting in hard at the pit of my stomach. Brendon on stage, singing my song. My words. His voice replacing mine. I didn’t know that. Why would he do that? To push the link between his band and mine even further? For appreciation? As a fuck you? As a ‘I forgive you’? Does it mean something? Does it mean nothing?

“You know they’re playing in Boston in two nights. Canada after that. Far out. They’ve got the tour dates here.” He points at the page again. Then he giggles. _Giggles_. “Listen to this! ‘Brendon Roscoe’s stage presence is sexual,’” he quotes. “‘The screaming girls make as much noise as the band does. The screaming boys beat both.’” He giggles some more. His Side is a new band, but the dubious sexual aura around them is already making parents object. It’s all good press.

“You know, if I wanted to read that, I would.”

The few pictures I’ve seen of the band always show Brendon off. It makes sense: he’s the lead singer, the frontman, and he’s fucking gorgeous. It’s hard for me to recognise him in those pictures, however. It’s like I’m looking at someone else. He looks fierce, confident, sure of himself. He looks cocky, sexual, alluring. Smirking at the camera with a knowing look.

They’re selling Brendon. Sexualising him.

I didn’t think he’d be into that, but he is. Didn’t know him at all, did I? No, of course not. He’s loving every bit of his newfound fame, shedding off his old skin. Transforming into a stranger.

“‘Ryan taught me everything I know about the music business,’” Sisky reads out and then looks at me. “Brendon said that. And then, oh, they get asked if they keep in touch with you. Jon says that they don’t.”

“Stop,” I say quietly. A sudden, sharp pain fills me.

“Oh, then –”

“Sisky!” I snap. He looks up with innocent puppy eyes. “I don’t want to know. Respect that, will you?” I sigh restlessly and stand up, grabbing my beer bottle. “It fucks with my head.”

I walk out into the living room where I plop down onto my armchair. Sisky’s put a fire on in the fireplace, and the flames flicker and radiate warmth. I glare at the dancing flames as Sisky walks into the room, hesitating.

“Um. Sorry.”

I don’t respond. I don’t want to acknowledge Sisky’s existence right now.

Fuck. Fuck, fuck. Brendon said that? In an interview?

God, I didn’t want to know.

What gives Brendon the right to talk about me? Playing my song, mentioning me in interviews? What gives him the damn right to be the one who is okay enough to talk about it? About what the world thinks our relationship is: Ryan Ross discovering the musical talent of a roadie and getting him a record deal. They thank me in the liner notes of their album. _His Side thanks... so and so, so and so... and Ryan Ross._ Just one name on the list. Vicky told me that. But they saved my name last. To give it impact.

Sure, it made sense. I discovered Brendon and Jon is my old bandmate. Sure, I am connected to His Side, so it’d look weirder if they didn’t thank me. And maybe it’s not their fault that all the interviewers ask them about me, it’s such a well publicised fact by now, but...

I had no idea that he was talking about me.

I hate it. Knowing that he says my name. Sings my words. I hate not knowing what that means to him, what it makes him think and feel, and then I drive myself insane trying to find meaning in some stupid interview, read between the lines, tell me, tell me, god, don’t you miss it? Baby. Don’t you miss what we had?

But he doesn’t or he wouldn’t because he fucked me over. He let me down.

I don’t want to know.

“Could I interview you tomorrow? About The Followers.”

“Yeah. Sure.”

“Not about His Side,” Sisky then adds as if to pacify me. It kind of works.

Hey, I liked The Followers.

We were amazing.

I loved that band. Man. What good times.

* * *

“It was the worst time of my life.”

He’s gotten his notes out, which I’ve granted because he needs the references to ask his questions. He is also taking notes, although I told him he wasn’t allowed, but somehow he’s talked me into it. I’m armed with a Scotch and a full cigarette pack with the ashtray on the rest of the armchair.

He doesn’t flinch, really.

“Well, maybe also the best.” I rub my left temple and then suck in cigarette smoke.

“What went wrong?”

“We were too young, I guess. The fame got to our heads. I mean, we didn’t even start getting that famous until _Her House_. Our self-titled got a decent, cult-like following, but _Her House_ made the charts and created a lot of buzz and made us semi-famous, and by the time _Boneless_ came out, it was like everything was ready to explode. Like a kettle at a boiling point and then it bubbled over. But it went wrong before that. Maybe when we signed to Capitol. I don’t know. Maybe it was wrong from the start, when we sat down at Chuck’s around the corner from the shitty one bedroom apartment Brent, Spencer and I shared. Maybe it was a mismatch of personalities. It wasn’t like... one day we were friends. And the next day we weren’t. It was gradual.” I blow out smoke nervously. “We were just too young to handle being rockstars. Joe and Brent were jealous that I got more attention.”

“Spencer wasn’t jealous?”

“No.” I eye Sisky carefully. “You know about the Haley business, right?”

“Yeah. Jac told me about that. Pretty harsh, right?”

“Pretty harsh.” I roll the cigarette between two fingers. “I suppose... that can be pinpointed, at least. Spencer and me. I suppose I lost Spencer the day he met her. And not because he now had a girlfriend and not because he fell in love but because now someone else was saying their two cents on what was best for him. And she didn’t agree with me on any of it.”

“They’re divorced now.”

“Yeah, but... Spencer’s a dad. He’s a divorcee. Haley will always have him. It’s not like it once was with him and me, we’ll never be friends like we once were. A lot of our phone conversations feel like apologies. I just don’t really know what we’re apologising for. Maybe we’re just nostalgic.”

“I think you’re being too cynical. And underestimating Spencer.”

I want to say that ‘well, you don’t know him like I do, do you now?’, but he’s probably right. I know Spencer is trying a lot, but I just can’t quite bring myself to embrace it. Can’t accept what he’s offering.

“Anyway, the band,” I say, trying to get this back on track.

“Joe and Brent got jealous that you were more famous,” he recaps, and I nod. They did. Started resenting me.

“Joe had all these grand ideas of his fame. He became more and more disillusioned the further we got. But people like you, you don’t get it. What it’s like when everyone treats you like a god. What it’s like when it’s all easy. We spent practically all of 1972 on tour, and when we got home, Joe calls me. This is a true story, so listen. He calls me the day after we get back to LA and goes, ‘Ryan, I need milk.’ Milk, you know, okay. I tell him to go buy some. But he says, ‘How?’ He doesn’t know. He’s forgotten. I tell him to get some change and go to the shop and buy some milk, but he’s so fucking confused by it that I have to go over there to remind him how buying groceries works. Because when we’re on tour, people just bring us whatever we need. We _forget_ what it’s like to be normal. That’s the bubble. That’s the illusion. Joe seemed slightly embarrassed by it afterwards, but that was the last time I saw him embarrassed by anything. He stopped making excuses shortly after.”

“And I remember this other night that felt significant even then. We played a few shows the summer before _Boneless_ came out, just to keep ourselves in shape a little, and... Joe saw this girl in the crowd. Thought she was hot, which she was, to be fair. So he had her brought backstage, but it turned out that she was there with her boyfriend. She wasn’t a groupie. And Joe couldn’t quite get that either. He assumed she’d want to sleep with him. So he had the boyfriend thrown out and he got her to come to the club with us, and then he got her really drunk and high and – I’m not saying that he raped her, she was into it at that stage, I suppose, or she didn’t protest in any case, but... She staggered out of the club bathroom in tears, didn’t even know where she was. And that night wasn’t the change, but it was then when I began to realise that Joe and I would never be friends again. Not because of her honour or anything, but because of him. He had just become this unlikeable guy. Obsessed with sex and his ego. He started fighting me on everything. I’d say, ‘It’s sunny’, he’d say, ‘It’s raining’. Like that Beatles song. I say yes, he says no, he says goodbye, I say hello. It’s draining, putting up with that every day. But we used to be friends before that. Way before that. In another lifetime.”

He writes something down and then looks at his notes. “You guys lived together, didn’t you?”

“For this one summer, yeah. God, was it... summer of...” I try to trace back years. “1970. Almost nine damn years ago. That was a good summer.”

“Oh?” he asks, quirking an eyebrow, and somehow it loosens my tongue.

“We were writing songs. It felt like something new, like we were discovering something. It was exciting. Joe might be... an asshole, but he is talented. We kept challenging each other to write better music. We managed to get shows playing in shitty LA clubs, we went about trying to get laid, we were rubbing elbows with anyone even slightly famous. It was so carefree back then. We’d hit on girls with ‘I’m in a band’ and ‘Remember that name, you’ll hear it again.’ Most of the time it didn’t work, but well,” I shrug. “And then we got signed by the end of summer. Back then I thought that Joe had become one of my best friends. I’d see us thirty years from then, still doing the same shit: music, booze and girls, night after night. But I was young. I was goddamned nineteen, _nineteen_ when we got signed. Spencer, hell, he was eighteen. And I thought that even after that, things wouldn’t have to change so much. That we could just fuck about indefinitely. But that’s not why I got into music. No, the music was always serious. But I didn’t expect things to get heavy. And it was such a buzz and it all happened so quickly, and soon enough we owed a shitload of money to the label. Too much studio time, you know? And you gotta sell. Sell, sell, sell. What a dream. Because let me tell you, and you better write this down, kid: the music industry isn’t looking for talent. It’s looking for merchandise.”

“The band became a product.”

“ _Precisely_ ,” I say, still bitter that we got sent back to the studio for _Boneless_ to write a song that would make a better single than what we already had. “Very few can break away from that cycle of profit. I suppose I can now. Hell, I could make two calls to book myself a studio to – I don’t know, record a concept country album based on fucking Snow White, and they’d let me. But getting that freedom is hard. I’m lucky. I’m lucky they all think I’m some kind of a fucking genius.”

“But you are,” he says matter-of-factly.

I only shrug. Who am I to take away other people’s flawed notions?

“Anyway, that tour – Jackie, Me and This Lady – we’re all ready to call it quits. We hate each other. Joe and I barely talk. I hate the band, I hate the tour, I hate the fans –”

“You hate us?” he interrupts sharply.

“Well, no, I – I’m not saying I hate _you_ specifically. I just hate what it’s become, this circus of adoration. No one ever says no to me. Kids keep asking me the meaning of life, and I don’t know what it is.” I suck on my cigarette again, blowing out smoke. “But, say, if I came out and said, ‘Man, I don’t know the meaning of life’, would you listen? Hell no. You’d say I’m bluffing. Because you want to adore me, see? You don’t want to know I’m just me. So we live in this bubble. And when we do something shitty, people let it slide. We start to think we’re invincible, above law and morals, but we’re not. And I begin to feel that people are there for the wrong reasons. Not for the music, but for this... artificial commotion. To sleep with me or Joe or, you know, something else. And it’s disappointing to me. It’s frustrating. Like I’m trying to communicate but everyone misinterprets me. Wilfully.” I stub the cigarette into the ashtray. “I guess everything finally came to heads that summer.”

“So it wasn’t the bus crash that caused you to break up?” he asks quietly and smiles a sad little smile. “We always thought it was the bus crash. Shook you so hard that it broke off the foundations.”

“No. We were already done.”

This makes him sad, I can tell. He writes something down with a melancholy air.

“Bands aren’t... predestined,” I tell him. “We weren’t _meant_ to find each other. Spence and I just happened to bump into Brent in Woodstock, we were all high, we thought we bonded. And then Joe, I found him in a Burbank bar one night, roughly a month into us having moved to LA. A bar. In _Burbank_. I mean, who the hell would you ever expect to find in a shitty place like that? They refused to serve me, I had no ID, but Joe bought me a drink. But that doesn’t mean that it was destiny. It doesn’t make us into a magical unit of soulmates or comrades. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we even love or like each other. We’re just people. In a band. And if it doesn’t work out, if it stops working out two, three, twenty years down the line... It happens. If we don’t expect marriages to last, why do people insist that bands have to last? It’s a lot more bitching and a lot less apple fucking pie.”

“I suppose it just...” He clears his throat. Avoids eye contact. “When four people create something that amazing. Something that life-changing. Maybe fans do idealise it, but... it makes us feel good.”

“And then it makes you feel like crap when your idealised concepts fall to pieces.”

“Yeah,” he admits. I wonder if his tiny heart broke when he heard that The Followers were done for. “So the bus hit that car, and you guys decided that was that?”

“Essentially.”

He goes through his notes, looking for something. He makes an ‘ah’ sound and then looks up. “Was it because you became a communist?” He sounds sympathising.

“What the fuck?” I ask.

“Brent said –”

“I’m not a commie,” I object. “Brent _said_ that?”

“He insinuated it. He said Brendon’s a communist too. Is he?”

“No. Brendon’s political policies are along the lines of ‘here I am and fuck all of you’.”

Or used to be, anyway. Before he conformed. I blame Shane for that. Not me, not that I broke his spirit that summer we met. I blame Shane. Brendon was all for giving the world the middle finger and doing whatever he pleased, and then Shane came along and tried to tame him. And what’s worse is that Brendon forgot that he was meant to be wild, playing house with Shane.

Well. Maybe that explains the cocky promotion pictures of His Side.

Maybe Brendon’s remembered who he is now.

Sisky looks at his notes again, seemingly very confused. “Um. Maybe I... Wait. So what _did_ you and Brendon get up to that summer? I thought it –” He frowns. “I got something mixed up, then. But you did meet Brendon that summer, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. But I didn’t really discover him or his musical talent until a few years later when I bumped into him in New York, so,” I say, artfully directing the conversation elsewhere, and Sisky buys it.

“So can you tell me about the bus crash?” He must see something flicker on my face because he says, “It’s just become a very... momentous part of your history. There are conspiracy theories about it, like, maybe there was no crash at all or –”

“There was one,” I cut him off. “I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“Why?”

“Because someone could’ve died. We were lucky no one did.”

“But –”

“Look, it was dark, it was raining like hell. The bus slipped onto the wrong lane, we hit an oncoming car, the bus tilted to its side and kept going for another hundred feet before coming to a stop. I mean, what more do you want? You’ll find it all in a police report or even a tabloid article. I really don’t remember anything of it. I was asleep in my bed when it happened.”

“You broke your arm.” He is eyeing my left arm accurately.

“My elbow got pretty badly smashed. It was in a cast.” I finish the Scotch quickly and pour myself another. “But I don’t want to talk about the crash. What matters is that we all knew it was over, already that night. As we got discharged, we all just went different ways. It took a month or so to make it official, let the press know. And that was that. That was The Followers done, from four guys drinking cheap beer at Chuck’s and discussing band names and how far out it’d be to be famous, to four guys with money and big houses and adoring fans, four guys who couldn’t stand the sight of each other. You know, that’s life. We learned something. I’d like to think.”

“Post-Followers, then –”

“Haven’t we talked enough for one night?” I ask, looking at the ticking grandfather clock. None of the furniture is actually mine – it was already here. I did have a lot of my shit from New York brought here, though, books and records and rugs. “We can keep going tomorrow. I swear.”

He looks sceptical, but I will keep talking another time. My mind is just full of ghosts right now, ghosts of the people I used to be, and it’s draining.

“Sure,” he says. “Alright. Almost dinner time, anyway. I’m making a casserole, my mom’s recipe. I think you’ll like it!”

This morning, when I came down, he had made scrambled eggs. It’s like suddenly I’m a guest in my own house.

He puts all of his notes away, places them in neat piles. He hums under his breath – _Better Lost_ , the opening track of the Followers debut – and he is clearly mulling things over in his head, putting my comments into a constantly growing narrative. I’m glad I don’t know what he’s thinking.

I stay in the living room, drinking Scotch and smoking, unwinding from the session as he goes into the kitchen and starts cooking.

I don’t talk about this stuff to anyone. It’s weird how, now that I am, I find myself having a lot to say. I didn’t know that I had something to get off my chest, and if I had, I would not have expected the audience to be Sisky.

Joe bugs me more. Brent, well, I have no regrets waving that cunt goodbye. He hated me and fucked my girlfriend. No, I have no regrets with anything that went down with him and me. We were friends, but I never felt close to him. Not the way I once did with Joe. And that’s why Joe will always sting somehow. I don’t wish him well because he wouldn’t wish me well either. In fact, he’d love to see me here. In this house. Hiding. He’d buy everyone in the bar a round, but he doesn’t know where I am. He is just as mystified by my retirement as the rest of the world. Good.

“Shit!” I hear from the kitchen, and Sisky comes back out. His shirt is dripping tomato sauce. He looks unhappy. “Do you have anything I could borrow? I’m out of clean clothes.”

“Sure. We can put a wash on later. There should be some old clothes in the second drawer of the chest of drawers.” I motion upstairs.

“Thanks.”

He hurries upstairs. The domesticity that we’ve fallen into in such a short time almost bothers me. Here he is, cooking for me, then we’ll wash some clothes and sort out the laundry and go grocery shopping and read books in the living room –

Jesus Christ, I want to gag.

But then I find it really hard to mind this.

He comes downstairs soon after, now wearing a black t-shirt. “Okay, so, do you like garlic?” he asks happily, back in chef mode.

But I can only stare at him. “Take that off.”

He frowns. “What?” He glances at his t-shirt: Old No. 7, Tennessee Whiskey.

“Take that off,” I snap, unnerved, standing up quickly, my heart suddenly racing.

He looks alarmed, reaching for the hem and pulling the shirt up his skinny form. I’ve reached him by the time it comes off of him, and I snatch the t-shirt and ball it up. The fabric is soft in my hands. Familiar. Old. Worn out. “Not this one.” Like some paranoid fear that it’ll smell different if Sisky uses it when it doesn’t even smell like anything anymore – just fabric. “It’s not yours to use.”

I push past him and hurry upstairs, not looking back although I know he’s watching me with confusion and that never-ending curiosity. But I will not explain this.

I slam the door of my bedroom behind myself and then fold the t-shirt again and put it on my bed. And then I just look at it lying there.

Like the body of a memory.

* * *

“See, I knew it’d end up badly,” Spencer says knowingly.

“Wait. Wait a minute. First you complain about me living in this bubble and news block – What did you call it? ‘A hermitage of ignorance’, that was it. And now that I’m trying to catch up with the world, that’s a bad thing too?”

“It is when you’re asking about Brendon again.”

Point. Sure. But did I ever really stop asking?

“Look, this is different. I knew that I got name-dropped in their interviews, but I didn’t know that he was _talking_ about me. Have you seen Rolling Stone? Have you read that? He’s _talking_ about me.”

“I’ve read it,” he says in this bored tone, but he’s not really bored, he’s just trying to constrain me.

“It’s all happening at once, man. I don’t hear from Jon in... I don’t know, eight months? And then he’s sending me a ticket to their show. And I haven’t seen or heard from Brendon in over a year and a half, but here he is, talking about me in black ink. And I thought this thing had been put to rest. In some way. But we’re colliding, we’re not going separate ways. I live in the middle of fucking nowhere, but still I feel like we’re colliding. Like I’m getting called out.” I stop to take a breath, almost embarrassed by my outburst. Thank god Sisky’s out of the house.

“Ryan, people try to call you out of your hiding every day. Just because it’s Jon or, I don’t know, Brendon doesn’t make it any different. And Brendon is just answering questions in interviews. He’s the only posthumous link to you since you vanished. People are bound to ask him questions.”

“But no one told me that he was talking about me,” I argue again, feebly. It changes everything. Doesn’t it? That Brendon is saying that I taught him all he knows about the music business. That he’s thinking about me. But Spencer doesn’t seem to think that changes anything.

“Is that such a surprise? I mean, do you think that he’s forgotten you?” Spencer points out sharply, and no. After the number I pulled on him, he certainly wouldn’t forget me. “Look, I don’t – I don’t know what went down between you two. I mean I _know_ , but I know facts, not feelings. It’s just been a long time, man. And you get so riled up about things like this, it’s not good for you.”

“So am I supposed to pretend I’m fine?”

“Ryan, dude. You live in Maine. Of course you’re not fucking fine. But you just... have to distance yourself. It’s water under the bridge and all that metaphorical crap. And you know what interviews are like, you say whatever needs to be said.”

It might be water under the bridge, but the water’s rising and then flooding and then _on_ this metaphorical bridge, and if I’m standing on it, then it’ll wash me away with it, won’t it?

“It might still hurt,” he then concedes, “but it takes a while before these things stop hurting. Trust me, I know. Pain doesn’t change the fact that it’s history.”

But it’s history that feels all too present. History that I’ve never questioned, but now... “Do you think...” I begin slowly, chewing on my bottom lip nervously. “Do you think if I hadn’t met Brendon that summer that the band would have lasted longer? I mean. I know it wasn’t just because of Brendon and me, but things with Joe, for instance, deteriorated so quickly. Especially because of us.”

“That’s a useless ‘what if’,” he says, accurately. “Why do you ask? I mean... we’ve never really talked about that.”

“I know.”

“So why are you asking now?”

It’s hard to explain to him how all of these memories are suddenly stirring up. That maybe the painful parts do need to be addressed.

I hear a cheerful “Hey!” from the hallway and the front door closing. Boots against the floorboards to shake snow off, and then Sisky appears in the doorway, cheeks pink from the chill, snowflakes in his hair, and a whole bunch of cut off spruce branches in his arms.

I blink. “What are those?”

“Christmas decorations!”

“Is that the kid?” Spencer’s voice asks, the receiver still pressed to my ear.

“Yeah.”

“Who’s that?” Sisky asks.

“Spencer.”

“Spencer Smith?!”

“No, the other Spencer,” I say with a roll of my eyes.

Sisky rushes into the room, spruce branches and all, almost jumping from one leg to the other. “Can I talk to him?” he asks eagerly, and I stare him down. His face falls. “Well, can you give him a message?” I roll my eyes again but nod. “Say... Say hi.” He smiles widely, excited.

“The kid says hi.”

Spencer snorts. “Cute.”

“Uh huh,” I say in agreement and shoo Sisky away. “He’s murdered some trees for Christmas decorations.”

Sisky is now obediently heading to the kitchen, but he calls out, “What’s Spencer doing for Christmas?”

“He’ll be with his daughter. Stop being so inane.”

Sisky sticks his tongue out, and I wonder how much more of his good spirits I can stomach. Christmas in itself has not occurred to me at all – the days all blur together out here. And it’s not even here yet, although Sisky keeps saying that it’s only a week and a half away. I swear tomorrow he’ll ask me if I’ve written to Santa yet.

“Actually,” Spencer now says, having heard me, and I focus on him again. “Haley’s going up to Illinois and is taking Suzie with her. I mean, she can do that, she gets Suzie this Christmas. And Haley’s parents want to see Suzie, of course, so...”

“Oh.”

Spencer sounds oddly hollow saying that he won’t see his little girl this Christmas. I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to that except ‘well you knocked up Haley and then you married her and then you _did_ get your heart broken, and I told you, didn’t I? But no, no, we didn’t listen to Ryan at all, and now you’ve got a kid, Spence, you’ll never make a clean break, you’ll always be an absent father to your child. Well done.’ But he knows all of that and it’d be too cruel to start calling him out on it. “You going to Vegas, then, to see your mother?”

“Nah. Staying here.”

“Oh.”

“You?”

“Just staying here,” I admit, looking around the living room.

“Who cares, though, right? Christmas isn’t that big a thing. Not like I’m even religious.”

“Me neither.” An awkward pause lands on the line, and I recall what I said to Sisky. That oftentimes these calls feel like conversations of apologies, conversations with other men. Not the people Spencer and I used to be. “Anyway, thanks for listening,” I say to cut off the silence before it gets too weird. It’s not often that I call him and just start rambling and asking questions. Usually we stick to polite conversation that doesn’t cause emotional havoc.

“No problem,” he says, however, and he sounds like he means it. “But don’t let that kid stir up shit that’s ancient history. Don’t let him fuck with your head.”

“Sisky or Brendon?”

He pauses, as if to consider this. “Both.”

* * *

Sisky keeps craning his neck and looking my way with big ‘notice me’ eyes. I choose to ignore him, resting the notepad on my raised knees as I’m curled up in the armchair. I brush over the lead on the page with my pinkie before going back to sketching. He’s been reading a Hemingway book that I recommended him, and the radio is on in the kitchen, playing morning news. I’ve read all of Hemingway’s books by now. He’s not even my favourite writer, but I just keep going back to him.

“What are you drawing?” Sisky asks eventually.

I don’t look up. “A drawing.”

“Of what?”

“Of what I am drawing.”

He sighs dramatically. He’s fidgeting slightly. He’s not good at being ignored. Then, “Can I _see_ what you’re drawing?”

I try to remain patient and look up at him at last. He’s sitting on the couch, the book now abandoned, and he has said a farewell to _A Farewell to Arms_. He’s batting his eyelashes at me. “Sure,” I give in. Of course the relatively cosy silent co-existence couldn’t last. He hurries over and takes my notepad from me.

“Oh. Oh, far out!” he says, taking in the drawing, and he starts flipping through the pages. “Hey, you’re not half bad. I didn’t know you drew. I mean, these aren’t... life-like or, you know –”

“Good?”

“Or good, yeah, but they’re interesting!” He smiles at me supportively. “So who’s the little boy you keep drawing?” He squints at a page and peers at it intently. “He looks familiar. In a way. I’ve never seen him befo – Oh. Oh, do you have a _son_?”

“No,” I sigh. “I have no bastard children.”

“Oh. Huh.” Then, “Would you like to?”

I stare at him blankly. “I’d make a horrible father.”

He looks somehow upset by this, but it’s only the truth. Maybe most people just have that awakening parental instinct, that subconscious urge to pass on their genes when they hit twenty-five or however old they are. I do not have that urge. I’m not paternal. It’s something I’ve never pictured for myself. I don’t need to have a child to make myself feel like I am doing something worthy with my life, to give it meaning.

And besides. The chances of me meeting a woman I’d fall in love with seem to be becoming increasingly slimmer. And besides, besides. I was ready to choose him. And everything that went with it. He would have given my life enough meaning. Ten times over.

The latter thought hurts, of course it does, and it’s all because of Sisky and how he keeps reminding me of painful memories.

“Can I have that back?” I ask impatiently, holding out my hand and then snatching the notepad from him. He looks sad and idle and then just kind of _lingers_. “You know, I have some Followers demos that we never did anything with,” I then tell him, and his expression instantly lights up. “On cassette. They’re upstairs.”

“Oh my _god_. Oh _god_. Can I? Ryan? Ryan, can _I_?” He’s looking towards the stairs with huge eyes. Jackpot.

“Sure,” I shrug. “The black shoebox full of tapes next to the cassette player.” For whatever reason, I dug them out after our Followers talk and listened to some of them while Sisky was out. Heard myself laughing with Brent, Joe and Spencer in between takes, banter and good humour and excitement and all that stuff that vanished so quickly.

“Thank you!” Sisky beams, and then he’s already rushing up the stairs two steps at a time. A minute later, I hear music from my bedroom and a kind of squeal that usually only female fans make.

There. That should keep him out of my hair for a few hours.

Huh. You know, maybe I wouldn’t have made a completely horrible father if Sisky is anything to go by. But no, that ship has sailed. My family tree has one branch and that’s it. I don’t feel upset by it. If anything, it’s freeing. Less people to disappoint and to hurt.

If you don’t count the thousands who feel betrayed by my decision to retire.

I am still writing music. Of course I am. I could never stop. I’ve been writing songs, but it hasn’t been that manic habit like it was before. I have no forty new songs hanging around. No, I have... maybe ten. Or seven. And I’m not writing them _for_ anyone or anything. I just need to write like I need to breathe. It’s soothing, almost, knowing that I don’t have to do anything with the songs. The pressure of an audience’s reaction is gone.

But I retired in the sense of leaving behind the music world. Vicky persistently said that I could stay in New York, but I couldn’t. I needed to get out. It was getting too ugly.

I manage to tune out the Followers demos well, but Sisky’s yelling and cheering is more difficult to ignore. He sounds like he’s in a football game and is cheering on his team. Some of those demos are not half-bad, in all honesty. At times he gets suspiciously quiet, but then he makes some random noise again, and I feel reassured.

I sketch my mystery boy, ten years old. My bastard son, but he doesn’t look like me. I can’t get him right, though, his eyes or – Maybe his nose, it’s not quite _right_ , and I end up frustrated and angry, and the picture isn’t even very good.

Eventually I give up. Music is still playing upstairs, bad quality, fuck ups and retakes and all. It’s almost time for an early lunch, so Sisky should make us something. I have needs.

The door to my bedroom is ajar, a song just coming to an end and Brent saying, “Hey, can we change that bridge part where –” and then the tape finishes. Just in time for me to avoid my past.

I walk in. “So should we –” I start but then I stop. Sisky’s not ogling at the cassette player dreamily like I thought he would be, but instead he is staring at the wardrobe mirror in concentration, his hands on his neck. The tape shoe box is on the floor with tapes everywhere. But so is another shoe box that I keep under the bed and then choose to ignore. The lid is off, the top layer a handful of pictures of Spencer and Gabe and Greta and Brendon. It looks like it’s been searched through. “What are you doing?”

Sisky turns to me. The light catches the silver chain around his neck. My heart plummets and then stops working altogether.

“I found this!” He smiles excitedly. “This is the one you always used to wear, isn’t it? It’s lighter than I thought.” He fiddles with the chain, rotates it to get it to sit perfectly. I feel sick.

“Take that off.”

He frowns. “What?”

“Goddammit, Sisky, take that off!” I bark, now rushing over, apparently quickly enough to scare him because he’s hurrying to unlock it. I run out of patience and grab it, pulling it from his neck the second it becomes unlocked. It’s cold against my hand, not very heavy. I enclose it in my fist, my mind reeling. How fucking dare he? I look at the shoe box that he decided to look at without permission. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

“Well, I – I thought there’d be more tapes, I –” He’s stuttering on his words.

“Don’t touch my stuff!”

“But you told me to –”

“No! I did not! You don’t fucking touch this, you don’t fucking wear it!” I yell at him, squeezing my fist around the chain further. “Have you any idea?! Any at all?! First the t-shirt and now this, and – You fucking idiot! Don’t you ever touch my stuff!”

I quickly go over to the shoebox, throwing the lid back on and picking it up, possessively placing it under my arm. Sisky looks at me in a way he hasn’t before. He looks scared. So am I.

“I don’t need you here, reminding me of all this shit I don’t want to remember! I’m fucking indulging you, and you’re just helping yourself to my life! Well, it’s _mine_! It’s not for public consumption, it’s not for some fucking book!”

“I’m sorry I t-took the chain –”

“Too fucking late!” I yell at him and point at the door. “Get out. Right now.” He doesn’t budge. “Get the fuck out!”

“Ryan, I’m _sorry_.”

“Out of my fucking house, you selfish, self-absorbed prick! I owe my fans? I _owe_ you?! Fuck every single one of you!”

I place the shoebox on the bed, strategically making sure that I am between it and Sisky, and then I approach Sisky as if to kick his ass right now, and this seems to have the desired effect because he hurries out the door like a scared child. I come to a stop, don’t follow. Breathe unevenly. Pull my hair with one hand. I’m wrecked. My hands are shaking. The chain is still in my fist. Something rattles so deep inside me that it feels like building blocks changing location, tearing up sutures.

I feel heartbroken all over again.

When I get downstairs, Sisky is sheepishly sitting on the couch, like him being still and quiet is what’s needed. I throw him his coat. He looks confused.

“Put that on and get the fuck out,” I hiss, my tone pained even to my own ears. I leave no room for objections. The chain is now in my pocket, and it burns against the fabric, I swear that it does. Sisky looks so shocked that he actually obeys, standing up and putting the coat on, but he stares at me like any second now I’ll say I am kidding.

I’m not.

He crossed the line.

He’s out of here.

“But what about... what about my stuff?” he asks uncertainly, like he still can’t believe this.

“I think I’ll help myself to it without permission,” I spit out, and then I am pushing him out of the house just like I was when he first arrived.

“Ryan –”

“Fuck you,” I say, my head and heart and everything still a painful mess in a way they haven’t been in months. Because I’ve been learning. That answers his fucking questions, _that’s_ what I’ve been doing: learning how to make it stop hurting.

And he just wrecks it like that.

“Fuck you,” I repeat again, more venomously, and then he’s out on the porch, looking shaken to the bone and confused and sorry. “I never want to see you again,” I clarify, and then the door slams in his face.

I step away from the door, thinking that now the cause is gone, now everything will click back into place. But it doesn’t. The thoughts don’t stop. They keep spinning and spinning, creating a spiral right at the very core of me.

I take out the chain and look at it, breathing hard. Such a stupid thing, and I hate it, fucking hate it, and I snarl at it, and I throw it across the room and it hits the hallway wall and doesn’t make much of a sound as it just drops onto the floor. I step on it on my way upstairs, and then I’m by the shoebox, going through pictures and backstage passes and memories, useless goddamned memories, and I find a random picture of Brendon there, taken during the recording of _Wolf’s Teeth_ when Shane had that fucking grand idea of giving everyone Polaroid cameras. And it’s Brendon, and he’s in my father’s cabin in Bismarck – my cabin, mine, I mean – in the living room, and he’s looking the other way with his arm outstretched like he’s reaching for a beer someone is handing him – me? Shane? Jon? Gabe? Patrick? – and he is smiling and looks beautiful, _is_ beautiful, and I stare at the picture of him and then I rip it in two and drop the pieces onto the floor, and I think of Sisky outside in the cold, and I think of Brendon singing _my_ song on stage, and I’m too tired for this life and –

I just can’t.

Downstairs, everything is quiet. Sisky isn’t banging on the door and I can’t see him through the window, but that’s fine. He’s gone. We can go back now, back to the status quo. Not thinking about it. History. Dead and buried. Water under the bridge.

I sink into my armchair, accidentally sitting on my sketchpad. I pull it from beneath me, the pages now wrinkled. I smooth them out with a shaking hand, nauseating sickness swelling up in me. And the kid on the page, this anonymous little boy, has a big mouth. Has got these big lips. They fit with the picture I just tore in two. And I look at another page. Same kid. Same lips. And another sketch. And another. And another.

And it doesn’t even click until then that I’ve been drawing figures with his features for the past seven months, during the time I’ve been living here. Women with his eyes or men with his nose or boys with his mouth, it’s all the fucking same, and yet I never put the eyes and the nose and the mouth in one picture to bring the obvious features together.

In shock and mild embarrassment, I throw the sketchpad away from me. No wonder Sisky thought the kid looked familiar.

Brendon is torn in two on my bedroom floor. He’s in the hallway, cold silver. He’s on the living room floor in bad drawings, caricatures by someone who could never capture his beauty. Who could never capture him, period.

He is everywhere. He hasn’t set foot in this house, but I carried him in. Even when I was saying that I was leaving him behind.

He follows me.

It’s not over.

It cannot be over because the corpse still has a pulse. It’s unfinished. Unresolved. And it will never go away just because I refuse to think about it. It’ll never go away if I keep wondering what the hell is going on, if what the magazines say is true, if I have to sit here trying to figure out what it all means to him now.

The Rolling Stone is still in the kitchen, and I find the right page but still can’t look at Brendon’s glossy paper face. I still find what I’m looking for.

The late morning sun is high up when I walk out of the house, armed with my coat, a scarf, gloves and my wallet and nothing else. The sun is over the sea, and the waves wash onto the shore, and the air is brisk and light, and it’s the first beautiful day in a while. I have not left this town since I moved here.

I have not left this place in seven months.

Sisky is nowhere to be seen.

I start to walk fast down the road, away from the house and the beach, towards the woods and the bigger road. It takes a while to catch up with Sisky who is slouching towards town with his head hung low.

“Hey!” I call out, slightly out of breath. He stops and turns around. His eyes go wide, like he’s expecting me to be armed with a baseball bat. “Hey.” I stop when I reach him, lean forwards slightly, sucking in cold air. He waits as I catch my breath. I stand up straight, pull myself together. “We’ve got a show to go to.”

He blinks. Stares at me in confusion. “What?”

“Yeah. In Montreal. It’s far away. We should hurry.”

“We’re what...?” he starts, voice faint.

“Get with the program, kid,” I say, nudging him as I pass and start walking towards town. “Can you drive?”

He blinks. It seems to click. He dashes after me, eyes bright. “Yeah!”

And that’s all I need.


	3. A Parting Gift

We stop at Flagstaff Lake in the late afternoon and sit in the car with the heat on as high as we can get it. Sisky stuffs his face with the chocolate bar that I bought at the gas station, and he laughs that isn’t Flagstaff Industries the name of my blind company. He shouldn’t even _know_ that I have a blind company.

Clifton gave us an okay car. He could have given us the one likeliest to break down or kill us, and I’m sure it crossed his mind, but instead he gave us an old but reliable Buick. He didn’t ask where we were going, and he didn’t ask if we were coming back. Just shot a dirty look at Sisky like this was his doing.

Sisky now sits in the passenger seat, taking a break after five and a half hours of driving. It’s my turn. That’s fair. I said I’d drive us into Canada, anyway, slightly into it, I mean… I’ll drive for two hours or so. Everything around us is rural, it’s a quiet road. And then Sisky can get us into Montreal. Okay. That works.

“You want some?” he asks, offering the rest of the chocolate bar. I shake my head. “You haven’t eaten all day. Is that why you’re so skinny? Because you are. Really skinny, I mean. You should eat more.”

“I eat plenty,” I say distractedly, my sweaty palms resting against the leather of the wheel. The radio station kept crackling so we switched it off, and now Sisky won’t shut up. He’s excited. Keeps asking if we’ll march backstage. We could. I’d get recognised at a rock show in approximately five point four seconds. My hair might have gotten longer, but that’s hardly a mask. I look the same. I have remained unchanged. And my absence has not made anyone stop looking for me.

So I could march backstage, sending the promoters and hangers-on into a slight panic because I have not been seen. The summer of touring with The Whiskeys came to an end – we’d seen Europe, we’d seen Australia and we’d seen Japan, and we were home at last. Home. And I remember standing there, in the doorway of my New York apartment, so quiet. So silent. I probably felt a fraction of the confusion that Joe felt that time he called me to ask how one goes about buying milk.

I wasn’t home. I was somewhere, sure, but it wasn’t home. And I knew that they had whisked Brendon off to Los Angeles for his music project, so he wasn’t in New York when I arrived. I could not come back to him. Which, I suppose, only made sense, considering he probably would have been homeless in New York since Shane stayed in that apartment of theirs while Brendon moved out – or so I had heard. Vicky spent that summer trying to make sure I heard no news at all. She was largely successful, but Mike is Brendon’s manager, and Mike works for Vicky, and so I heard things. Sometimes. And so I was back in my apartment.

And in the kitchen was the ghost of a girl, humming along to the radio, dancing in place as she cooked dinner. And in the living room was the ghost of a boy, putting a new record on and then joining me on the couch again, curling into me, pressing his nose against my neck, and I smoothed down his hair and took a hit of the joint, and he smiled against my skin and said I smelled good, and I loved him.

There are no words to describe what emptiness feels like after that. It’s not even empty, which would suggest the presence of something before or a potential to be filled.

It was just... nothing.

The tour had offered the distraction I needed. I had become a workaholic. Obsessed with making the shows perfect. I had asked Vicky for more interviews. I’d talk. And talk. And talk. And sing. And talk.

The public was so happy that I finally was who they had always wanted me to be.

And I was never alone.

The cab driver had wished me a good night when he had left me on the corner of Prince and Thompson. And I got out my keys, dragging my suitcase, and I hauled it up six floors, and then I stood there. In my apartment. Alone. With no one around. No fans grabbing at me or yelling my name, and no Gabe avoiding me because I had fucked that one up well, I really had, and the road crew wasn’t there, I was no longer important because I was out of that bubble, and –

I was hollow.

I had returned as a shadow of myself. And I don’t think the scope of my loss even really hit me until then, like I had powered through summer and two months of more touring like a machine. Unemotional. Detached.

I had to get out of there. I left that night, grabbed a few things and got a room in a hotel in the next block. Didn’t sleep. Sat on a squeaky, narrow single bed with cockroaches scurrying across the floor, and I swear I didn’t blink once.

It was a bit like peace. Knowing that I was somewhere where nobody knew I was. Where no one would come looking for me. I felt more at home in that tiny room than any of the luxury suites across the world, champagne pouring and cocaine on silver plates. I felt like depravity was closer to what I deserved.

We were supposed to announce our late fall tour of the US the following day. Get back on the road the following month.

But I couldn’t. The fallacy of my life had caught up with me, and I knew then and there that I would never be able to hit the road again.

In the morning, I called Jon and told him it was over. He tried to convince me to come meet him, talk it out. I refused. He said that I couldn’t just leave Patrick, Gabe and him high and dry, let alone all the dozens of people that we knew who had been involved. But I did leave them. He told me I was a fuck up. I said that I was aware. He apologised, he hadn’t meant it, he was just upset. He asked me to come meet him. I said no, and he hung up on me.

It wasn’t the last time we spoke. We have spoken, we have talked it out, made amends. We’ve both apologised and said that we’re still friends.

A week after my phone call to Jon, the press release came out.

By the time it did, I had left New York. Lived in a hotel room in Manchester, New Hampshire for six months. Happened to take a weekend trip to nowhere, to the coast. Found my house on a desolated beach. Bought it.

And I have not been seen.

A dramatic reappearance isn’t really my kind of thing. Waltzing backstage would cause a rumour mill. I don’t know why I’m going, but it’s definitely not to be taunted by the press present at the show. It’ll be best to keep my head low.

Sisky clears his throat slightly. Again. He’s been doing that for the past minute.

“What?” I ask irately.

“Are you, uh...” He motions at the road. “Actually going to drive?”

A truck drives past us just then, fast and unstoppable. I flinch without meaning to. Sisky’s jaw slows down in its munching movements, coming to a stop. He stares at me. “Are you _afraid_ of driving?”

“Fuck you,” I snarl and push the gear onto one, flick the indicator, check the side-mirror, the rear-view mirror, turn my head, stare at the expanse of empty road behind us, nothing there, no one, count to five, five, five, five, five, and then press the accelerator and get us off the hard shoulder and back onto the road. I flex my fingers but keep them firmly on the wheel, hating how sweaty my hands continue to feel.

Sisky is still staring at me, grinning even. “You’re so afraid of driving.”

“Oh wow, that’s helpful! That’ll keep us on the road! Thanks!”

I press the accelerator too hard and we fly forwards, and that smirk on his face disappears. Good. I slowly drop the speed, smirking at the way he’s put on his seatbelt and has paled considerably.

“I, er- I could drive,” he says timidly. “I’m not _that_ tired.”

“We’ll switch when I say so.”

He nods. He keeps eyeing me worriedly, and I try not to think about the situation too much. The road is quiet, the sides of the road are white with snow but the road itself is gleaming black. Driving is automatic. I _am_ a good driver. I just don’t like it. Anymore.

“Anyway,” I say, needing something to distract myself. “We’ll find a hotel in Montreal, and you can stay in your room while I go to the show and –”

“I’m not going?!” he asks, scandalised. “I _am_ going! I want to see His Side live just as much as any other Ryan Ross fan! In case Ryan shows up.” He smiles at me sweetly, and I roll my eyes. “I really do want to go, though. _Jon Walker_ will be there. Jon is amazing! He is just... wow! You know? And I did buy their album and it was really good! It’d be great to see them live! And I want to know if Brendon Roscoe is as good live as the article said.”

“He probably is.”

I don’t see there being much in this world that that boy couldn’t do.

“Can you introduce me to him? I’ve met Jon three times. He’s nice. But I’ve never talked to Brendon Roscoe or, well, I did a few times during _Jackie_ , I mean, the roadies were half-gods and gateways to the band but I spent so much time that summer getting high and chasing after the band members that it all kind of blurs together, but can you introduce me to Brendon Ros –”

“Would you _stop_ calling him that?” I snap. “That’s not his name. That’s a made up name.” I take in a deep breath, unnerved.

Sisky looks curious. “It’s not a real name? I know yours is real. I’ve seen your birth certificate.” Well of course he has. “What’s his real name?”

“Brendon.”

“Brendon...?”

But Sisky will go hunt down all the Uries and interview Brendon’s mom and his homophobe of a dad, and no. I’m not doing that either. Brendon went through hell to get rid of those people, and I’m not about to organise a family reunion. I wouldn’t do that to him. Despite everything.

“He’s of no concern to you,” I then say. He better leave Brendon alone. Brendon’s only taking baby steps into fame – he doesn’t need to get called out yet.

“Well, I want to meet him nonetheless.” Sisky is pouting, lower lip jutted out and everything. “And I want to meet Ian and Dallon and Bob.”

“Who?”

“Ian and Dallon and Bob. That’s the guitarist and the bassist and the drummer.” Huh. So he’s done his homework on His Side, too.

“I don’t think meeting the band is in the cards,” I tell him, and he looks displeased with this plan. But I don’t have an actual plan. I should turn this car around and go back home. I’ve regretted this decision seventy-five times an hour since we left. I don’t _know_ what I’m doing, I just – He just keeps talking about me, and Jon sent me a ticket, and I never got in touch with Jon to let him know I wasn’t going, so maybe he kept waiting to see me in New York five nights ago. Maybe he kept looking around. Maybe Brendon did too.

So I don’t have a plan. I just want to go and see them play, see what the fuss is about. Suss them out. Assess the situation. Make my plans then.

But my sweaty palms aren’t only the result of the road and being behind the wheel.

I’m going to the same city. Same venue.

This has got to be the stupidest fucking thing I’ve ever done.

* * *

We get to the venue an hour after the doors have opened but luckily the show isn’t sold out. I’m irritated and anxious nonetheless.

Note to self: nine hours in a car with Sisky? Not the best way to guarantee sanity, even if he fell asleep for a while, shutting up for a whole thirty minutes before I woke him up and made him drive us the rest of the way, the traffic getting intolerable as we closed in on Montreal. Even that was bad – sitting on the passenger seat in a swirl of traffic.

I like airplanes. There’s not much chance of crashing into someone or something high up in the sky.

At the hotel it proved impossible to get rid of Sisky. He insisted on coming, said he’ll make his own way if I don’t take him, and then he’ll tell _everyone_ that Ryan Ross is in the building, and –

That’s just fucking low.

So now we’re here together, and I lurk behind the corner with my hood pulled over my head while he goes to the box office that’s decorated with Christmas lights. He soon returns. “They don’t take US dollars.”

I stare. “What?”

“They don’t take US dollars,” he repeats and gives me back my ten dollar note. “Also, a ticket is six bucks each.”

“Six bucks for a concert ticket?” I ask, huffing. “Ridiculous what things cost these days!” It’s not the money – it’s the principle. “Right, we’ll go get some Canadian dollars, then,” I seethe, shooting daggers at the playhouse in downtown Montreal, ‘Tonight: His Side’ written on huge letters out front. The venue fits roughly four thousand by the looks of it. The band is drawing in big crowds already.

And he is somewhere in there as we speak.

Sisky is giving me a _look_. He is very distinctively giving me a _look_ with an eyebrow arched and lips pursed together.

“What?” I ask.

“Um, hello?” He waves a hand in front of my face. “You’re Ryan Ross! We don’t need tickets! We just march in there!” He seems very keen on this idea of just marching into the venue like we own the place.

“And what if I want to keep it down low?” I ask, and he looks annoyed. “Now come on, it’s cold out here.” Our breaths rise into the air, and I head down the street with him complaining about my lack of enthusiasm. He thinks I’m here to make a comeback – I am not. I’m here to see what the hell is going on.

I’m not here to see him. I’m actively trying _not_ to think about how he is here, and I am here, we are in the same place, and it’s enough to make my guts twist and send my mind reeling. Just another indication of how _over_ I thought it was and how over it’s not. Not for me. I still think of him every day. Every single day.

I convince a coffee house keeper a block down to exchange some of my cash to some of his since no banks are open at this hour. I say “Bonsoir” and “Merci beaucoup” and end up losing quite a bit in the exchange. He keeps staring at me curiously, searchingly. “Do I know you from somewhere...?”

“Non,” I say and then drag Sisky out of there because his mouth opens wide as if to say, ‘This is Ryan Ross!’ I hand him the cash as we walk back towards the venue. I didn’t plan on marching into the venue, not exactly, but shuffling with currencies and shivering in the cold outside incognito while he is a star inside really wasn’t how I envisioned this going.

Again I remain behind the corner, wishing I had a hat (recommendable in this weather) or sunglasses, which became my loyal friends and accomplices of disguise while I was living in New York. Good ways to try and not get recognised, but now I only have a hood to protect me. Walking into a venue potentially full of people who’ll recognise me in two seconds? Smart one, Ross. Smart, smart, smart.

A taxi pulls up to the curb next to me, and I don’t really pay attention to the tall, brown-haired guy who steps out of it. Well, except for checking out his ass when he bends over and peers into the backseat – it’s a nice ass, the tight denim jeans hugging it tightly. But it’s not nice enough to distract me or make me feel any less nervous. I wait for Sisky to return so that we can go in and find a dark corner to hide in or maybe just leave. Yeah. Maybe we should just _leave_.

“I’m peachy,” a voice mumbles from the direction of the taxi. I stop. Frown. Look over again.

The tall guy is no longer alone but has helped out another guy from the back of the taxi, which now takes off. The other guy is not tall but short. Shorter than me or Brendon. As the two stand next to each other, the handsome tall guy looks even taller, an arm now around the shoulders of the guy drunkenly leaning into him, with a ridiculous mess of brown frizzy hair down to his shoulders like he’s a cheap man’s Jimmy Page. His jacket is open with just a white t-shirt underneath, and he must be freezing, and something’s hanging around his neck, laminated and shiny. A backstage pass.

“And we’re walking... and we’re walking...” the tall guy says, leading a drunken Ian Crawford away from me, towards wherever a back entrance to the venue is. Their steps are slightly rushed like they are in a hurry. Well, yeah. They probably need to be on in less than an hour.

“Got ‘em!” Sisky’s voice chirps by my side, showing me the tickets, but I keep looking after Ian and whoever the other guy is. Sisky spots them too.

“Oh. _Oh_ ,” Sisky breathes. “Ryan, look! That’s Ian! And Dallon! Hi, Ian and Dallon!” he all but yells, now waving enthusiastically, taking a step their way like he plans to catch up with them for a chat.

I grab Sisky’s arm to stop him just as Brendon’s bandmates look around. Dallon, the tall guy with soft blue eyes and neatly cut brown hair, looks our way only briefly and then walks faster, which is a smart thing to do when fans harass you as you’re dragging your drunken guitarist to the venue. Ian, however, keeps staring our way even as Dallon drags him along. Ian’s eyes focus on my hooded figure.

“Come the fuck on,” I hiss at Sisky and pull us around the corner just as I hear a confused and drunken, “Hey! Hey, you totally look like –”

I wonder if Ian’s life mission still is to sleep with me or if he’s gotten over that now that he’s in a famed band, which is two fifths secretly gay.

“Are you an idiot?” I ask Sisky as I push him in front of me, keeping my eyes cast downwards as we give the tickets to a security guy at the venue door. Sisky only pouts some more and looks at me with a hurt expression as we walk up the stairs, music echoing all over, still muffled. We enter the actual hall from the back, faced with the backs of three thousand people standing in a mass, engulfed by darkness and then lit up by lights from the stage where a support band or another is playing. The crowd feels restless but enthusiastic, and the air is heavy with cigarette and weed smoke. The people on the stage look small.

“Should we try and push our way to the front?” Sisky asks happily. I stare at him in disbelief. What about this is he _failing_ to understand?

“Look, you go play with the other kids, and I’ll stay here. We’ll meet in that coffee house afterwards, alright?”

“But –”

I’ve already turned my back on him and pushed my way to the nearest crowd to lose him. It’s only a fake move because I snake through people only to leave the mass again and stand in the very back corner, hiding the best I can. My coat feels too hot as the room is full of perspiring teenagers and young adults. They generally seem to be between sixteen and twenty-five, maybe, with some of them a bit older. A lot of them are wearing His Side t-shirts. A lot of them are wearing Followers t-shirts. A lot of them are wearing Ryan Ross & The Whiskeys t-shirts.

The integration of these bands does not even really hit home with me until then.

Musically, I don’t get it. All my second band had to do with my first one was me. All His Side has to do with my second band is Jon. All bands sound different. We were different genres. And maybe The Followers and The Whiskeys sounded the same – of course they did to an extent because it was _my_ music – but His Side definitely does not sound like me.

Vicky said that His Side is the only posthumous link to me since I left. That people cling onto that.

Clearly they do. Here’s a band that I get the credit for. I found him. I enabled his career. I gave him to the world as a parting gift.

So maybe these kids have come to see what Brendon has to say in the absence of their legitimate leader.

The support band wraps it up, thanks His Side, tells people to enjoy the show. And people clap and chatter and smoke and get drinks from the bar, and roadies shuffle on stage and set things up and rearrange the microphones and bring out keyboards. I lower my hood when it gets too hot, and then I smoke in the corner and wait. Fans look around, bored, but the privacy of the corner keeps me safe, keeps my face in the shadows. I don’t even want to know how the scenario would play out if someone spotted me. I’m pretty sure someone would die – me, most likely, squashed to death like a bug.

But eventually, after nearly forty minutes of nothing, the stage is ready. The audience can tell that it is. And then it starts, the chanting: _His – Side – His – Side – His – Side_. Stomping. Yelling. And it fills me with dread, but then I remember that it’s not for me, they’re not waiting for _me_ , and I do not need to go on stage.

And when the lights switch on, illuminating the stage, I realise that perhaps I underestimated this event as being my vigil. Because the crowd isn’t mourning. It becomes _alive_ : a wave of jumping people, a wave and another, arms outstretched.

A stocky, blond guy marches on with messy hair over his eyes, holding up his hand as a greeting, and they love him. Then the tall guy comes on, Dallon, and I can just make out that he’s smiling this amused smile as he remains on the left side of the stage, and they love him. And then Jon comes on. It’s surreal. But there he is, taking his place on the right side of the main microphone stand, and I know what he looks like standing there. What it’s like to look to my left on stage and see him there. A pillar of rock, but now he resembles a pillar of salt. And he looks the same – his hair is the same, his clothes look the same or perhaps are smarter: black slacks and a dress shirt with a butterfly collar. Dallon is dressed in similar fashion, but the drummer is wearing a black t-shirt. Jon’s got that Gibson that he bought during our only ever tour together. He smiles, and it seems authentic. And they love him.

Then Ian comes on. He smiles, seems nervous, wide-eyed. Lacks the confidence that the three other members ooze. He can walk now but seems disorientated, blinks against the lights. I can only wonder how much coffee they pumped into him. He clutches onto his electric guitar like a lifeline as he stands between Dallon and the only spot still empty. Unfilled.

And when the last figure half-jogs on stage and the audience reacts by screaming, screaming, screaming, screaming, I – I can’t look. I drop my gaze and feel every inch of me tingling, hyper aware. Hear my blood pounding in my ears. Look at anywhere but, even when I hear him, and it’s his voice, and he says, “Bonsoir Montreal,” and his accent sounds good to me, he sounds like a well-travelled man, and I suppose he is in some ways. And then he just says a seductive sounding, “Thanks for coming out. We’re His Side.” He says it with such ease and such lightness to his words.

And then, as the music starts, explodes, falls on us, I look up. And he’s taken the microphone from the stand, is nodding his head to the beat, is next to Ian, and then he leans towards the audience to make them scream and starts singing.

And it’s right then that I can no longer pretend that this isn’t his life now. Some part of me has been set on thinking that he isn’t really in this band, isn’t really singing on the radio and giving interviews. That he’s still a waiter or a bartender in some shitty club somewhere, waiting for the day that I stroll in and save him.

But I guess that’s it. That he never, ever needed saving. I just arrogantly assumed that he did.

He looks the same. From afar, he does. He’s the same height. Same weight. Same colour of hair.

But he has grown in ways that make him almost unrecognisable. He’s got stage presence. He _controls_ the stage, isn’t intimidated by the crowd, isn’t apologetic for being there – isn’t like me. He radiates confidence that I don’t associate with any of my memories of him. He was always fierce, always knew his worth. Or pretended to, at least. And he lets the audience sing the chorus, nods approvingly, and then kicks into another verse. Easily. Smoothly. Like he’s been doing this forever, like this isn’t their first tour and their, I don’t know, eleventh show. Like he isn’t scared shitless though he must be. He _must_ be.

But he just lets the crowd love him and want him and adore him. Lets the crowd do the work for him. And he walks up to Jon and they share the mic, and then he gets the crowd to jump up and down (and the crowd does, the fucking floor _shakes_ ), and then he sings the last chorus, puts the microphone in its stand, the guitars and the bass and the drums reach their peak, and he walks to the edge of the stage, both fists high up in the air and just stands still like a god. And the crowd has gone _wild_.

Trying to associate the man on stage with my Brendon feels impossible.

Because it isn’t. He was never... _sure of himself_ like that. Never carefree like that. But now on stage he is the things that he never was with me. Probably because he no longer is with me.

“Okay, let’s get this show on the road,” he then says, breathing heavily into the microphone.

The songs that they play have heavier parts in them, getting the kids to bang their heads to the beat, but it’s not full on heavy rock. It’s a fusion with lighter pop. And as I watch them, the rumours get confirmed for me.

Rolling Stone called Brendon’s stage presence as one of sexual energy. That’s exactly what it is. The crowd eats out of the palm of his hand as he sings a song that’s explicitly about sex – ‘you don’t taste like anyone else I know’.

“You don’t taste like anyone else I know,” Brendon repeats, walking around Ian, who isn’t moving much. He seems purely focused on playing guitar in his still-drunken state and trying not to fuck it up. To his credit, he is doing it well. “Oh, baby, what did I say?” Brendon asks Dallon, and then they share the microphone and repeat the line. They lean very close to one another momentarily, and their heads turn to align their mouths but the microphone is still in between, but they still are _too_ close, and I freeze and a lion roars in me, and then Brendon’s already stepped back.

What the hell was that?

Suddenly, the slight homoerotic subtext is all I can see. It’s not the way Queen does it with their crotch-cupping tights and glittery scarves – no, no, His Side is dressed appropriately. Brendon is wearing black jeans that come high up on his waist, they’re tight and leave very little to the imagination, and his dress shirt is properly buttoned and is now glued to his skin from the sweat. And Brendon isn’t trying to hump his bandmates, but there’s some kind of chemistry there, and Brendon rests his hand on Dallon’s shoulder as they share the mic again, and then the touch is gone but –

Dallon clearly watches Brendon walk away from him.

Brendon doesn’t do it with Jon or Ian or the drummer – was his name Bob? Sisky said so, I think. Just with Dallon and only very briefly, and I am sure that it’s mostly my imagination. But them touching each other was there nonetheless, and maybe the crowd just appreciates the gaying it up sketch and moves on, well at least the crowd members that even noticed it, but I can’t move on, not even when two songs later Brendon hovers around Ian and stands too close to him than is necessary or advisable. I’m not relieved that it’s not just the handsome tall guy, no, whatever, I’m just baffled that this has the Asher Management Company’s seal of approval.

Shouldn’t they be trying to make sure no one accuses Brendon of being a faggot? How is Brendon eye-fucking his bandmates on stage going to help this show stay on the road?

The answers are lost on me.

“This next song isn’t mine,” Brendon says eventually. They’ve been on stage for nearly an hour, and thankfully Brendon hasn’t shown any further inappropriate interest in Dallon.

“Not mine either,” Jon says to his mic.

“We’re borrowing it,” Brendon says, microphone in hand. He wanders to the drum kit, taking a beer bottle from the platform and drinking from it as Jon continues.

“It’s a Followers song,” Jon elaborates, and the crowd responds with enthusiastic applause. “You might’ve heard of them?” Jon asks, then laughs at the cheering. “Of course you have.”

Someone screams ‘RYAN ROSS!’ really, really loudly just then. Jon points at the person. “Yeah, you’re right. This is his song. Well done.” Jon strums a chord. My throat feels tight as I watch them from the shadows, where they don’t know I am. None of them do. “Yeah, this song was written by a friend of ours, Ryan. We play this song every night. He’s changed a lot of lives, and...” The sudden silence feels eerie. I thought it would be a vigil, but it’s been a rock show. _Now_ it’s a vigil. Jon’s tone has changed. The atmosphere has changed to one of... loss? “Well, it’s called _Miranda’s Dream_.”

I wrote _Miranda’s Dream_ on tour back in the day. It’s based on reoccurring dreams about a girl with long brown hair and big green eyes. She kept getting chased in the dream, but every time she almost died, she realised she was dreaming, decided to change it, and so she did, creating a new world. But then whatever was hunting her caught up with her again. I kept having that same dream for about a week or so. Wrote a song about it: ‘She dances with her captors tonight, she never tries to put up a fight. And she is golden, she is golden –’ That’s where the drums really kick in and it all spirals, ‘– and she never asks –’ Heavy guitar, distortion, ‘where you are’, and the last two minutes are instrumental as we bring all our instruments together in a spiralling symbiosis of sound.

Every single second of that song is embedded into my brain. Or maybe deeper. It’s in my soul. If I believe in souls, and I don’t know if I do. But it’s like hearing the song for the first time when His Side plays it. They haven’t changed the song much, and so it’s distinctively different from their own music. The song’s not asking for attention, it’s not trying to pull you in with a catchy line or beat. It’s not trying to please – it’s trying to say something.

Brendon walks back to his microphone stand, slides the mic in place. He places both hands on it, head hung, nodding slowly and waiting for the singing to start. But it doesn’t for another minute – first the guitars play together, then over each other, compete. Mine and Joe’s – Ian and Jon’s. And the crowd is silent and a few of them have taken out lighters because the start is slow.

And Brendon is different when he sings it. He sings my song beautifully. Better than I ever could. And he’s still now, he’s not trying to hype up the crowd, he’s not trying to provoke a reaction by moving his damn enticing and hypnotising hips. He stays by the mic stand, and I think he’s got his eyes closed. And he sings about a hunted girl that kept visiting my dreams. And that’s the Brendon that I recognise. When he stands still, the pretence gone. When he seems to be focusing on the lyrics more, when he appears to be deep in thought. “She never asks where you are,” he sings and the lights flash at the right time, and the crowd moves restlessly and in anticipation, and he takes the mic and walks to the edge of the stage, holds a hand over the jumping crowd as the song explodes. “I never, never, never ask where you are,” he sings, which the original song doesn’t have, and then one of the techs brings him a guitar, and they finish the song with _three_ , not two, guitars, and it sounds amazing.

I wish I was standing closer. Front row. I wish I could see his face as he sings, if he flinches when Jon says who wrote the song. If he is thinking of the lyrics or if he’s thinking of me.

If he means it when he says that he never asks where you are.

But now I know that the magazine didn’t lie. His Side is a good live band – apart from a few drunken slips from Ian that only a professional could pick out – and Brendon is incredible on stage. He’s sexual, he’s intense, hell – he is even slightly homosexual. He is showing charisma I never knew he had.

I always underestimated him. How genuine was my promotion of his talent, anyway? I just wanted to show him how I could do all the things for him that Shane couldn’t. Win him over.

Yeah, well, isn’t that an ironic thought in hindsight?

“This is our last song,” Brendon then announces, and the audience cheers and boos, not knowing which one to pick. Brendon wipes his forehead, and I know what the sweat on his skin tastes like.

A few people at the very back leave to avoid the imminent mass movement and queuing. They’ll switch the lights on when the band is done, and then my dark corner won’t be so dark anymore.

The song sounds like a ballad of some kind except the tempo’s faster. Brendon starts with, “Which promise was the easiest to break? Oh the one, all the ones, you made to me,” and it’s a damn generic line that seeks to be relatable to everyone ever (a common pop song quip), but somehow the way he _sings_ it. It just hits home.

And there he is like I’ve pictured him to be: centre stage, spotlights on him. Beautiful and captivating. Almost unrecognisable.

And now I know it. Now I truly –

“Ryan?” a voice comes, one of complete surprise. I look to my side and a guy is standing there, a Followers t-shirt on him, eyes wide, long brown hair past his shoulders, barely out of high school. “Ryan,” he repeats because I reacted to my name, and now he knows I’m not an apparition. “Oh my god, it’s _you_!” He’s shouting it over the music but then turns around with, “You guys, it’s Ryan fucking Ross!”

I freeze up, suddenly very aware that I’ve been made. Most of the people in my vicinity have their backs to me, but one of his friends looks our way, and then he’s shaking his friends’ shoulders frantically, and I still haven’t thought to move.

But I really need to move. _Now._

“Excuse me,” is all I say and move to get the hell out of there.

“Wait, man! Ryan, shit,” he swears, panicking, trying to block me.

“Excuse me,” I say again, and the commotion caused by my presence or at least the rumour of it seems to be spreading like a live flame in the gig-goers around me. Heads are turning rapidly, people frowning, some searching frantically, but my hood is back over my head so people look around, confused. And then I’m already out of the hall, but this persistent kid follows me, calling out my name, and a handful more follow. My eyes spot a ‘Staff Only’ door next to the stairs that would lead down and out, but there are kids in the stairs now looking up to see what the yelling is about. A bouncer is by the door, and I walk to it determinedly.

“Personnel autorisé seulement,” the bouncer says, holding out a fat palm to stop me, but his eyes are on the kids following me, and he’s frowning.

“Now’d be a good time to let me in.”

He looks at me. I look at him. I probably look like a panicked animal being hunted – I know I feel like one. Fucking hell, man, help me out.

His eyes widen. And then he presses a hand on my shoulder and pushes me towards the door, quickly stepping to stand behind me with, “Go right in, Mr. Ross,” rushed over his shoulder. I escape through the door as he calls out, “Would you all stay back?”

Once on the other side of the closed door, I stop to breathe. Listen to the commotion outside. Press my hand to my face, curse myself for being an idiot.

I got spotted. Well of course I got fucking spotted, and now I need to get out of here before they surround the building or break down the door or –

“That?” the bouncer’s voice booms from the other side of the door. “That was just one of our sound techs. There’s nothing to see here.”

If a door didn’t separate us, I’d kiss that man.

Nevertheless I now walk down the narrow, bare corridor, unsure of where it’s heading. I look for an exit sign, turn around a corner, eye the pipes that run along the ceiling, the corridor walls’ grey cement. The music is coming closer, His Side playing their last song. I slow my rushed steps as I realise that wherever I am, the corridor must run along the venue hall, and I’m nearing the stage. The music gets louder and louder.

I stop. Look to where I came from, look to where I’m going from. Realise I can only go forwards.

My hood’s fallen back to my shoulders. I card through my hair nervously, an ominous feeling beating in my chest. A few steps greet me at the end of the corridor, and I ascend them carefully, eyes darting from side to side as I enter the backstage area, thankfully dark with only the lights from the stage flashing.

The music is so loud that I can feel the bass thumping through me. Not too far to my side, the stage starts, and I see backs of people following the show, venue workers and roadies moving to the rhythm. From between the viewers, I see Jon, who no longer looks minimised but almost life-sized, and beyond him is –

A door ahead of me has an exit sign above it. There. That’s my escape before they finish the song.

But I don’t go towards the exit because I find myself approaching the stage. Curious. Drawn to it.

I move to stand behind a truss that supports stage lights. It’s conveniently behind the backs of the onlookers, but I can still see the stage while remaining in the shadows and mostly out of sight. Jon’s smiling at the crowd as he plays, clearly enjoying it, and Brendon walks towards him but keeps singing to the crowd. Jon’s shirt is glued to his back, and I can feel the heat of the stage to where I am.

I’m going now. Any second. Any, _any_ second.

But then the song ends, and Brendon yells out, “Merci beaucoup, Montreal! Bonne nuit!” And the band is waving goodbye to the crowd that is cheering like hell. And instead of leaving, I merely take a step back into the shadows more and watch the band come towards my side of the stage. Jon gets there first and roadies pat his back approvingly, and he wipes sweat off his face, hair stuck to his forehead. Cassie is there, I see her now, and he smiles at her but it looks like it’s taking an effort. And then Bob is there, and he’s not smiling. He’s soaked through and through, and he grabs a beer bottle someone’s offering him and then keeps walking past the crowd and past where I’m hiding. It very clearly looks like he’s storming off.

Brendon, Dallon and Ian come off stage at the same time. This is because the second they are in the relative safety of the off-stage’s darkness, Ian’s shoulders slump, and Dallon is quick to catch him when he wavers.

“Shit,” Ian seems to mouth, and people rush to attend to him. Cassie’s smile fades and her look of disapproval is nearly identical to her boyfriend’s. The audience is still cheering and not moving anywhere: they’re still expecting an encore.

“Someone get him coffee and more water!” Mike Carden’s commanding voice then calls out. I’ve only met Mike once, but recognise him instantly: the long brown hair to his shoulders, the young-ish oval-shaped face, and he now has a thick moustache on his upper lip. Probably to try and look older. More manager-like.

“You need to sit down, man,” this Dallon guy says, looking tall as ever as he, Ian and a few others walk past my hiding place. They help Ian to sit on one of the amp hard cases by the steps that I took up to the backstage area, but they attract my attention no further.

I look at him. He’s got his back to me, but his shirt is glued to his skin and the back of his neck is flushed. He’s only fifteen feet from me. And he’s talking to Mike who is shaking his head and pointing towards Ian, and clearly the drama of whatever is happening _is_ still happening. Jon’s got his arms crossed and his lips pursed, discontentment and disappointment on his face.

The difference between the band on stage and off couldn’t be more glaring.

My heart is beating so fast that I feel the thud of it in my veins, my blood pulsating. He’s right there.

And it’s to this wreck, Bob having marched off angrily, Dallon attending to an exhausted, sobering up Ian, Mike and Brendon arguing, and Jon and Cassie standing there silently enduring it, that I could step into.

I could come out of the shadows now. That’s why I’m here, after all.

To confront him at last.

The crowd is chanting _His – Side – His – Side_ religiously, devoutly, and the line of Brendon’s shoulders is tight as he and Mike argue. The lights keep flashing on stage, to tease the crowd, and Brendon’s figure looks like a multicoloured, illuminated dream.

And I could step out of the shadows, then. Make him turn around. See his face.

Because I can’t see it. It’s unnerving, upsetting. That’s the one place where I have any chance of figuring out the truth: in his eyes when he looks at me. If it’s hatred or longing. Neither. A bit of both?

But his back is decidedly turned my way. Like I haven’t earned the relief of knowing yet.

And, I realise, I’m not ready to know it.

Jon might have invited me to New York with Brendon’s blessing, but I couldn’t make myself go. And now I could descend on their chaos and add more to it, I could be there in five seconds and watch Brendon and Mike shut up, and then I could just stand there, hold his gaze. Ask what the hell is happening with the band, with them covering my song, ask what the hell, what the hell –

God, what the hell is happening between us even when we’re apart?

“Just shut up for two seconds!” Brendon then barks, and Mike takes a step back. The two look like a magical transformation of Pete and I.

“Can he finish the set, even?” Mike asks, and they look towards Ian and Dallon. Dallon notices this and takes the glass of water from Ian and starts coaxing him to stand up and go do the encore. Bob is back, too, towelling his face, mouth a thin line, looking anything than amused. The crowd around them looks all kinds of awkward and apologetic. A few groupies are there, too, ogling at Bob so I guess they’re with him.

I know Brendon isn’t upset with me, I know that _none_ of this has anything to do with me. His guitarist showed up drunk, is clearly still out of it, the entire band is stressed out, and Brendon now looks towards the stage, hands in his hair. But it’s that split second of anger, that sharp tone and wrath that hit home. What I always thought his reaction to me would be if we ever met again: _how could you?_

Hey, don’t steal my questions.

And if I step out there, then what?

We just glare at each other and nothing more.

And so I’m paralysed where I am. Because he’s right there, still looking towards the stage, and he and I have never been further apart. More broken up.

Jon goes to talk to him, puts a hand on his shoulder, and he relaxes some, nodding as Jon says something, and Bob, Dallon and Ian join them, wait for the chanting to get loud enough for them to go back out.

And I cannot bring myself to face him or any of them. But mostly just him.

And then he nods like a captain giving permission to fire, and His Side rolls back on stage: Bob first, then Jon – the crowd explodes – and then Ian and Dallon together, and then Brendon stands there, waits a beat, hands in fist, and the roadies watch him, and then he nods to himself and heads back on stage. With confidence. A sense of purpose.

On his own two feet.

And I tear my gaze away from him.

Panic rises in my chest at the first second when I no longer see him. His voice echoes everywhere as he thanks the crowd for calling them back out, but when he says it, I’m already at the door that promises to provide me with an exit. And it leads me to a stairwell, and I go down, down, and Brendon’s voice is a muffled echo that’s trying to grab onto me violently, tries to pull me back, tears me wide open, but still I hurry away from him until, until, until –

And then I’m outside in the cold again. I breathe heavily, everything in turmoil inside me. The night is dark now, the street lights are the only source of light. I’ve come out through a side-door, and I see people appearing around the corner of the building where the main doors are. And I breathe in cold, cold air and I shiver to the bone and I light a cigarette with trembling fingers, and then I suck in smoke like it’s air.

And nothing, nothing has changed.

What did I think would happen? That he’d magically see me mid-song. Forget the lyrics. Stare. And he’d jump off stage, snake his way through the crowd, and then he’d be there, wide-eyed, shocked. ‘You came,’ he’d say, voice weak. And then he’d whisper, ‘Please forgive me’, and me, ‘I forgive you, baby’, and he’d hug me tight. Or alternatively that he would have seen me in the shadows when I was backstage, that he’d be yelling at Mike but then he’d magically sense my gaze, turn around and see me, words dying in his throat. All the answers, all the forgiveness clear on his face.

And then I’d know.

But I know nothing. That didn’t do anything for me except throw reality in my face. His success and newly gained fame have been so easy to ignore so far. And when I close my eyes and try to focus on smoking, I only see him on stage, only see the graceful way he moves. And even my old memories of him suddenly feel new, like he is a part of me that will never fade with time.

And so the memory of him lives on, but now it’s changing, shifting. From the boy curling into me in the back of a tour bus, gently pushing closer and feeling so perfect in my arms, to that man who marched on stage just now, determined and sure.

The man who is no longer mine.

People have started to pour out of the venue and around the corner, and they’re gushing and talking excitedly. I quickly pull my hood over my head and head the other way, to the coffee house, wanting not to get swallowed into a crowd of people who can recognise me.

I doubt I could escape a mob twice. If a rumour has spread that I’m here, they’ll be on the lookout.

I slow down in my steps as I now notice a tour bus further down the side of the venue. It wasn’t there before, I don’t think. I approach it slowly, just to be on the safe side. A shiny metal box, very much like the bus that I drove was. Their bus isn’t brand new, but it doesn’t look too old either. A sizeable venue worker now stands by the side door of the building, eyeing my hooded figure suspiciously. They’ve gated off the area. A few fans are already rushing over to wait for the band to come out.

I walk past the commotion. I could stay. See if he can spot me in a crowd.

But we already tested that theory and he can’t.

He would not spot me in a crowd because he isn’t looking.

He’ll sing my words and say my name, but he isn’t looking to see if I turn up.

And I can’t bring myself to find out what would happen if I made him face the consequences of his actions.

* * *

When I walk into the coffee house, a waitress addresses me in French, but it’s drowned out by a guy doing an acoustic set in the corner. The air is thick with smoke and people are chattering and drinking black coffee, a lot more pretentious than the sweating crowd down the road. This time I take in the excessive Christmas decorations of the place as well: cardboard Santas and reindeer taped to the walls.

I lower my hood and blink at the waitress still waiting for a reply. She stares at me when she sees my face, slightly transfixed, and I recognise the honeyed look that suddenly glazes her blue eyes. I smile at her with painstaking effort, and her cheeks redden. She says something in French again, but this time her tone is sweet.

“I’m sorry, what?” My voice is rough, raw somehow.

“Oh. We’re closing in half an hour.”

“That’s fine. Can I get coffee? Black.”

“Sure.” Her eyes follow me when I go to one of the empty tables, and I sit down with my eyes to the door so that I don’t miss Sisky when he arrives. The waitress has got long legs and nice tits. She’s narrow in the middle, widening at her hips, she’s all around beautiful, and I could. She bites on her bottom lip when she brings the coffee over, her long black hair in a ponytail and resting on one shoulder. She makes eye contact, and I could.

But screwing cute girls in the bathrooms of various establishments does not feel that appealing anymore. I look around the café, and there’s a hot guy two tables away, messy brown hair, chocolate eyes, and my guts twist slightly at the thought of taking him instead, and it’s more appealing but just as hollow.

They’re not him.

The waitress walks away, looking slightly disappointed when I don’t return her interest.

But my insides feel heavy, my thoughts a mess. I dig into my coat and pull out a flask, the familiar engraved letters of _G.R.R._ under my thumb. This one’s for you, Dad. Or in your memory. They all are.

I pour vodka into the coffee when no one’s looking.

Sisky still hasn’t arrived, and so I focus on craning my neck to watch the guy play in the corner, focus on his sloppy fingering of the strings, anything to make me not think about how he is probably getting on that bus soon. Probably not for another hour or so, but eventually, and then he will go his way and I will go mine. And the thought is painful.

It’s also ridiculous because he and I have not even crossed paths. Not really. I’ve only been in the same room unbeknownst to him for a while, and that doesn’t count as him and I having collided. It doesn’t mean anything at all except that I caved in first, I had to come see him and then I chickened out.

So I guess he’s still winning.

I only came to see if the rumours were true. If what the magazines say was true. And it is. He’s a star and my name is not foreign to his lips.

So there.

There, there.

I didn’t come with some foolish hope of everything getting magically fixed.

He’s fine on his own. And now I’ll never see him again.

Just as the sudden lump in my throat nearly cuts off my breathing, I hear a, “Look, you just pour some coffee into the thermos, right? Not that hard,” from behind me. I turn back around, and Mike is now in the coffee house. He’s holding a thermos bottle, trying to get the girl to take it, and next to him is one of the roadies I saw by the stage just fifteen minutes ago.

“Alright, alright,” the girl hisses while I duck my head as _shit shit shit_ proves to be a dominant thought. Mike would recognise me instantly.

“Someone should invent, like, coffee you can take with you,” Mike now says to the roadie with a weathered face and messy black hair. “What would that be called?”

“Portable coffee,” the guy suggests. “They could put it in paper cups or something.”

“Shit, that’d sell.” They wait around, and Mike is tapping his foot against the floor impatiently. “That was a good show, considering.”

“Considering, yeah. You don’t show up for a show that drunk,” the guy mutters. “At least he’ll now have some coffee to drink on the bus, but still. Something needs to be done about it.”

“He’s Brendon’s friend, what can I do? Chastise him, sure. Tell him we’re disappointed, sure. Jon will give him a good talking to. He managed to show up, though. He didn’t forget his parts. That’s professionalism on some level. Still. If it weren’t for Brendon standing in my way, I’d fire Ian.”

“Dallon’s taking Brendon’s side too.”

Mike scoffs. “Brendon and Dallon teaming up. Now that’s hardly a surprise… God, where’s that damn coffee?” He looks stressed out and bitchy – just about like any manager ever.

The girl comes out shortly after, handing the thermos to the roadie.

“Took your time,” Mike snaps and hurries out without further ado. The girl looks even more pissed off.

The roadie, however, gets a sly smile on his lips and flips black hair from his forehead. “Thanks, babe. We just played a show down the road.”

“Oh, did you?” Her voice is crisp and uninterested.

“Yeah, I’m with a band. His Side? You might’ve heard of them.” He hands her some money. “There’s extra there just for you.”

Oh, a fatal mistake. You can’t let them _know_ you want them. Chicks dig mystery.

“Merci,” she says with a purse of her lips and then turns around to clear up dirty cups from now empty tables. The guy looks slightly displeased, his eyes lingering on her form as he exits the coffee house. She comes over to me from where I’ve been trying to cover my face with the side of my palm pressed to my forehead, like I’ve been contemplating life all this time. She smiles down at me hopefully. “Anything else I can get you?”

“No. Thanks.”

She looks disappointed.

I slowly relax from the sudden invasion of Brendon’s manager and one of their roadies, drinking my spiked coffee and trying not to think about their words too much. About problems in the band. Already. People taking sides. Already. Well, I saw that myself, didn’t I?

I never wanted him to have to go through all of that. Too late now. Can’t protect him even if I wanted to.

But I’m sure that Brendon can handle anything that comes his way.

The musician’s finished playing his shitty set, and people applaud dutifully. Someone calls something out in French, and the waitress passes my table and says a helpful, “We’re closing.”

Yeah, I figured.

I tip her generously. A ‘sorry, you are attractive, but it’s not you – it’s me. And I swear that five years ago I would have.’

Sisky, unsurprisingly, hasn’t showed up. I stand outside the coffee house, put my gloves back on, tie my brown scarf around my neck, and watch my breath rise into the icy air. I told him to meet me here, so where has he gone? Stupid idiot…

He knows our hotel, though, and I’m not _responsible_ for him, absolutely not, so he can make his own way back. And I don’t want to wait for Brendon to leave. I’ll leave first. It’s always easier for me if I manage to leave first. Makes me feel like it was my decision, that I’m not fleeing because I just witnessed how okay he is without me, even in the middle of a crisis.

If I leave first, I don’t have to deal with the realisation of how unready I am to face him.

I walk back towards the venue slowly. There are a few dozen kids hanging around outside, and I look to where the tour bus still is, and kids are still waiting for the band there too. Sisky is nowhere to be seen, and a taxi is coming down the street so I hail it over. I get to the backseat, say, “Hey. Can I get, to uh… Rue… Saint… one of the saints, man.”

“Which one?” he asks, and I don’t even remember the name of the hotel. I look out of the window to the venue and, amidst a group of kids standing on their own, spot Sisky.

“Hang on, I just saw my friend. He knows the address.” I get out of the car and cross the street, ready to snap at Sisky for disobeying simple goddamned orders. He’s smoking like most of the gig-goers standing by him are, shivering in the cold as they form a circle.

“No, man, it wasn’t actually him,” the one with ginger hair sticking from under a green woolly hat says, his back to me. “I dunno who those kids think they saw at the show tonight, but it was not Ryan. It’s time we all face the truth: Ryan is dead.” I slow down my steps, frowning. This comment gets a hum of approval from the other kids – not even kids. They’re all in their early to mid-twenties. “He died in September 1977. They’ve just covered it up, man.”

“He is _not_ dead,” Sisky says, sounding angry.

“Sisky,” the guy laughs, “wake up and smell the rotting flowers! I _know_ people, alright? I’ve got inside information.”

“Maybe I’ve got inside information too.”

A few of the guys laugh. “Please. _You?_ ” the ginger guy questions, and the general consensus seems to be against Sisky’s credibility. “Ryan ODed last year. That’s why The Whiskeys split. They had him cremated and scattered his ashes from the top of the Empire State Building. It’s this whole conspiracy, man, and another thing.” He holds a dramatic pause. “They don’t think the overdose was accidental.” A girl gasps. “Yeah, man. He cracked under pressure. Took his own life.”

“You are full of _shit_ , Melvin!” Sisky snaps. “Ryan would not kill himself!”

“Like you _know_ him.” The tone is mocking, and Sisky’s cheeks might be red from the cold but they turn redder just then. Melvin motions down the street towards the bus. “Why don’t you go hang out with the teenaged groupies by the backdoor, alright? The true fans are having a conversation here.”

The people chuckle, and Sisky nervously drags in smoke and hangs his head.

“Hey,” I say loudly, causing the small crowd to turn around. They stare. They stop… and they stare. It’s a Webster’s dictionary definition of ‘stupefaction’ that hits them all simultaneously. The cigarette that the ginger one is smoking drops from his lips as his mouth hangs open. I look past him. “Sisky, you coming or what?”

Sisky stares at me in astonishment, and then he drops his cigarette, steps on it, and pushes through from between the ginger kid and one of the girls.

“Ryan –” the ginger one rushes out, eyes wide as saucers, but I cut him short.

“I’m not fucking dead, so fuck you. And for the record, suicide is tacky, so how about you stop lying about imaginary inside information, alright?” I glare at him. “Fucking tagalongs…”

“I-I meant no offense, we –”

“Come on,” I tell Sisky, who seems very rigid and frozen. I place a hand on the back of his neck because he might not move otherwise. “We’ve got a cab waiting.” I guide him away from the crowd, and Sisky is staring ahead like he can’t believe this is his life, but as we get closer to the taxi, he gets a slight spring in his step.

I open the door for him. The crowd has followed us. Fans do that – follow me when I leave. But they keep a slight distance, still staring at me, and one of the girls has got tears streaming down her face. Stupid idiot. I’m dead? I’m _dead_ to them?

Sisky almost gets in the car but then turns to the fans quickly. “I’m Ryan’s biographer!” he calls out and then shrugs in a ‘what do you know?’ way, hands lifting and everything, and then he grins wildly and gets in the taxi.

“Fucking kid,” I mutter and follow him, and it’s once we’re inside, once we’re separated, that the spell gets broken and the fans are pounding the taxi windows and frantically calling out my name and asking me not to leave.

The driver looks at us in confusion, but then he gasps. “Merde! Ryan Ross!”

“Sisky,” I snap, and he says, “Rue Saint François Xavier, s’il vous plait,” like it’s coming from his backbone, and the taxi takes off quickly.

One fan runs after the taxi for two blocks before giving up.

Sisky’s cheeks are still red, but a small smile lingers on his lips, a mix of joy and embarrassment, but he doesn’t look at me, not quite.

“You’re not my biographer,” I repeat, anger swirling inside me. I overdosed on purpose? Is that what people think?

He rubs his cold-looking nose. “Sorry.” He looks tiny then, mouse-like.

I only lean into the backseat and think that, well.

I go this way.

And Brendon, my Brendon who is no longer mine, who stands centre stage, goes another way.

The one that leads away from me once more.

* * *

The idiocy of the Montreal excursion hits me at the hotel, sometime after the fifth Scotch poured from the bottle that I smuggled from the dead hotel bar back to my room. Sisky sits on my bed and eyes me worriedly as I pace back and forth.

Sisky’s got a glass of Scotch too, but he hasn’t touched it. He is being uncharacteristically quiet and mostly just looks at me with pursed lips.

“God. Fuck. Shit.” I rub my face tiredly, sighing. “What am I doing here? I mean, really. What for? Veni, vidi, nihil egi.”

He stares in confusion. “What?”

“I came, I saw, I did nothing.”

“Where did you pick up Italian?” he asks, and I cringe but don’t correct him. Spend seven months on your own – you end up acquiring surprising skills. “Well, I thought it was a really good show. His Side was excellent. Everyone agreed.”

Like the _show_ is my fucking problem.

“Everyone being those brats you were entertaining?” I clarify anyway, and he half-shrugs. He’s been down about it since we got back. He’s got his problems, I’ve got mine but at least he isn’t dead and at least he hasn’t proved incapable of facing his former lover. I pour myself another drink. I can feel the alcohol in my system, making my insides warm. If I keep drinking, it’ll get to my thoughts eventually, will shut off my brain. “Who were those snobby bastards, anyway?”

“The followers,” he says, and when I frown, he explains, “The Followers’ followers. I mean... that’s what we called ourselves. Because we were... following The Followers.”

“How witty.”

“Yeah, well...” He pulls on the collar of his t-shirt that says ‘Route 66’, bought from some kind of a tacky souvenir shop between LA and Chicago. “I used to hang out with that crowd. They’re the hardcore fans, you know? The ones that followed you from town to town, who knew all the roadies and waited outside hotels and were always front row. You know, the _true_ fans.”

“Love isn’t measured by obsession,” I note faintly, and he looks embarrassed once more. I’m not criticising him. He’s obsessed, maybe, but he’s alright. I’m not drunk enough to make that admission, however.

I keep thinking back to what they said, though. About my supposed suicide. Like I was that weak, that fucked up. Anger bubbles in me at the thought of it. “I wouldn’t want to hang out with that crowd,” I hiss. Brendon knows I’m alive, of course, but what does he make of such rumours? Do they just solidify what he already thinks of me? A fuck up. A ruiner of lives. Thank god _that_ came to an end.

Sisky’s eyes light up slightly, and he leans forward. “Yeah, they’re not _nice_ , are they? Melvin used to be nice. We met when we were fifteen, we were best friends, you know? We both fucking loved you. And then we followed you during _Jackie_ , and Melvin was so cool back then. But, I don’t know. First Brent, like... actually remembered his name, and then he once had a few beers with Joe, and Joe still remembers him, you know? And Melvin just thought he was too _cool_ for me after that.” Sisky is now playing with the sleeve of his shirt. “No one ever remembers me.”

“He’s just easier to remember. An ugly, chubby ginger kid.” I keep saying ‘kid’ although this Melvin character is probably twenty-three or twenty-four. Not even that much younger than me.

“Yeah, well.” He shrugs, but then smiles. “We showed him, though, huh? Next time I see him, he’ll still be too stunned to speak. Because I found you. I’m on a road trip with you!” This thought seems to please him greatly. “Wait until everyone hears that you were spotted!”

Oh, joy.

This thought makes me finish my drink and automatically pour another one.

Which one is better? To let people think that I cracked, bound a leather strap to my arm, pressed the needle into my skin with a shaking hand, knowingly taking a lethal dose, or that I am actually out and about and fine?

And what if my cameo actually reaches the band, too? ‘Hey man, Ryan Ross was at your show in Montreal last week.’ Lurking in the shadows. Pathetic. That’s what they’ll think – that I’m pathetic. I marched backstage, at least, like Sisky so desperately wanted me to, but even then I...

I’m a coward, and now I want to get back into the car and drive back home – sweet, rural, dead Machias. And then forget and never let anyone mess with me enough to make me think that I have unfinished business with anyone from His Side.

They’re all doing just fine without me. They’re doing marvellously, even.

“You know what, Sisky?” I ask, motioning at his glass. “You need to drink. That’s what we need to do here – drink.” My skin is itching, my brain hurts, and I feel full of anger aimed at nothing and no one.

Sisky coughs when he first drinks the Scotch, and I guess he isn’t used to it. He braves on, however, smiling at me, and I wish he’d stop. That ‘you’ve been so nice to me’ appreciation is rolling off of him in waves, but I am not nice. 

“Where are His Side heading next?” I ask.

“Toronto. They have a week more of shows, and then they’ll take a Christmas break, and then they have a handful more after New Year’s,” he says knowledgeably. “What did you make of the show? I thought it was great. Brendon’s performance was so full of emotion, wasn’t it?”

It was.

I take in an uneven breath. “I can’t stay here. I need to get out of this country. This city. I need to get back home.”

I look around as if to pack up, but I have nothing _to_ pack up. Sisky looks confused and intimidated, but twenty minutes later we’re back in the car, and I’m curled up in the passenger seat, wrapped up in my winter coat and drinking straight from the bottle that I’m no longer sharing. Sisky looks unnerved as he drives across a darkened Montreal, quieter than earlier. I leave the navigating to him.

“Are you okay?” he asks gingerly.

“No,” I laugh, rubbing my face. “No, I’m not fucking okay. I just want to get back home. That’s all. God, this was a stupid idea. Seeing him again...”

“Jon seemed to enjoy himself, though,” he throws in, and fuck Jon. I loved the guy, still do I guess, but he can do whatever he pleases. He doesn’t wreck me.

Sisky then starts babbling about what he thought of the show, analysing it rather accurately, noting that Ian made a few mistakes. I’m pretty impressed that he managed to pick that out too. Huh. Well spotted. Smart kid. Then he gets onto Brendon and he gushes like the fan that he is, saying my Brendon is talented and so full of energy, and “When he sang _Miranda’s Dream_ , god, I had chills going down my spine!”

Me too.

Sisky smiles slightly lopsidedly as he drives, and I make a drunken note of him still being a fan. I’ve started to forget that.

“You know, when I was talking to Melvin and the guys outside, they said that... Well, I mean.” He glances at me worriedly. We’re on a highway now. Good, good. Good, good, good. “Apparently some people say that Brendon’s, like... I mean.” He’s very clearly struggling to form this sentence. “That he’s not purely... interested in women. I mean. There are rumours.”

I nearly laugh. Of _course_ there are rumours – Brendon has never been in the closet. Not until now. And he has a long damn list of men he has slept with, and he used to work in a gay bar in San Francisco and he’s attended gay freedom marches or whatever, and he lived with Shane for well over two years, and he might slap on a new surname for himself, but he’s a star now. And people always want to know what bit of the sky these stars have fallen from.

There are rumours about Brendon, but it’s difficult to prove one way or the other without hard evidence. The rumours don’t even stem from Brendon’s gay past because so far journalists have _not_ been able to find out where he’s from. It’s mostly coming from Brendon when they perform, that’s what Vicky said, and I never got that until now. He’s just – sexual.

“You should know better than to believe all the rumours you hear,” I say bitterly, the ashes of my burnt body landing on New York in my head. I would never choose a place as tacky. There is no place where my ashes could be scattered. I never belonged anywhere.

Sisky nods like he knows he shouldn’t believe rumours, but at the same time he frowns. “I guess but... he did get _really_ up and personal with Dallon and Ian, didn’t he? I swear I thought he and Dallon were going to, well, uh... kiss.” He looks awkward saying it. Leeches like Melvin  & Co. are bound to hear rumours like that eventually, and Brendon’s very brief moment with Dallon certainly isn’t helping. But I didn’t just imagine it – Sisky noticed it too. I’m not deranged. I wonder if any of the fans have heard the same rumour about me because I know there have been rumours about my sexuality for years now. Yet, if the rumours are there, Sisky is clearly blissfully ignorant of them so maybe no one just buys them and don’t think them worth mentioning. Who would ever think I’m gay, anyway?

“Brendon and Dallon had chemistry, though.” Sisky seems more confused the more he reflects the interaction between Brendon and his bandmates.

Straight guys are so fucking cute.

I’m busy not thinking about it, though, or thinking about Mike’s words: “Brendon and Dallon teaming up. Now that’s hardly a surprise…” His tone had been slightly sarcastic. I wonder what he meant, what the inside joke was. If he was insinuating that... No. No, I saw them myself when they came off stage: there was nothing suspicious there at all.

I’m making it up.

“God, I need a drink,” I say. Sisky quirks an eyebrow as if to say ‘but you _are_ drinking’. Well, I need to drink more. Clearly.

I’m just jealous. There. What do I get for the admission? Brendon’s most likely banging hot guys left and right every night, again and again, and I don’t exactly have the right to be jealous. I know that.

And nothing suggests that Brendon would be involved with Ian or that freakishly tall bassist with those soft blue eyes and nice broad shoulders and that cute ass that even I checked out. Not everyone in this world is gay, for god’s sake.

But then again, it is Brendon Urie. Or Roscoe. Whoever he chooses to be.

And he can win the heart of any man.

It’s such a bitter pill to swallow. Life has been easy for him, no doubt, because what we had didn’t mean a thing to him.

That’s not true. No, no, that’s not true, you know this, Ross, you know that. It’d just be easier to believe that I was an idiot, lost in what we had, not seeing that for him it was just something to pass the time. But he did care. He returned to me. Gave in. Arched into my touch. We wouldn’t have fought like we did if we hadn’t cared, we wouldn’t have cried and yelled and –

It mattered to us both, is my point. It mattered. It tore us to pieces.

And I’m still too broken up about it to even step out of the shadows and face him.

“Do you ever – ever get fucking sick of your own thoughts?” I ask, the half-empty bottle in my grip. It wasn’t completely full when we started. Or I started. I lean into the seat, closing my eyes, listening to the drone of the car. But it’s not soothing. I suddenly feel like I felt that day, that first day when I sent him away. The worst day of my life. The memories come rushing back, memories of making love to him, that excited buzz in me when I thought that I had him, that we were going to _be_ together now, that he was finally mine, and then the cruel reality when he left me. He left me, and I had to send him away. Because I couldn’t... And now it’s like I have done no progress at all over the past year and a half. That’s a whole new level of being pathetic. “You’re lucky you’re still young,” I tell Sisky sombrely but definitely not soberly. “You don’t know loss. You don’t know what it’s like when all the- all the good things seem like a thing of the past.” In the back of my head, I know I’m ranting like an old person. I open my heavy eyelids and stare at him. “You ever had your heart broken?”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah? How long did you date her for?”

“Five weeks one summer.”

“That’s not heartbreak, that’s adolescence. You ever lost a best friend?”

“Melvin.”

“He’s a cunt and you know it. No, listen, you don’t know loss. And I – I suppose it’s all relative. What is loss to you is insignificant to me, and I don’t mean to belittle your asinine life experiences, man, but fuck your asinine life experiences. Like when you asked me why I’m living in that house in the middle of nowhere, I’ll tell you, fine. I’ll tell you. Maybe because I can’t lose anything there, alright? When you ain’t got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose, like Dylan says. And I’m so sick of losing people. I lose people. I swear somewhere out there is a lost and found just _full_ of people I’ve lost, but the map is all wrong and I’m too tired to go claim them, half-petrified that they won’t even recognise me anymore. And I – God, I remember when The Followers split... I remember the night of the bus crash. Spencer and I... I’d recently found out about – about Suzie and Haley, and I was so mad at him, man, I was so... And he said that we were no longer friends. That was it. Like it was that _easy_ , that on that day he decided that I could be walked away from. People do that, you know. They just _decide_ not to care about me. So I do the same in return. Serves them right.”

“That’s not true,” he says, frowning. “You care. You care a fucking lot.”

“I don’t care.”

“Then why did we go to Montreal?” he asks, and the answer is on my tongue but a bit misplaced. I come up with nothing. “You do a lot of walking away, but you still care. You can’t switch off your heart.” He sounds wise beyond his years just then, and I crinkle my nose in disapproval at all the sense he is making. “Besides, you can walk back. I mean, you talk to Spencer now. You’re friends.”

“Or do we just have no one else?” I mutter quietly, looking out of the window at the cars on the opposite lane, going by... going by... going by... I’m too drunk to worry about the ten million different ways this car could crash. Should crash.

“Your mother left you,” Sisky then says quietly, sounding apologetic. 

“Yeah. I guess she started the trend,” I chuckle angrily and take a slug.

“You talk to your dad at all?”

I’m quiet for a while, confused. Sisky knows everything. Doesn’t he?

“He’s dead.”

This is clearly news to Sisky whose eyes widen in surprise when they should be on the road and not me, but if we die tonight, well then we die.

“I – I’m so sorry. I didn’t... know. I thought. I know he’s sick, but I... Shit. I’m really sorry, Ryan.”

I shrug and take another slug.

He gets this gloomy expression like my indifference offends him. “When did he pass away?”

“Late last year.”

“That must have been horrible.”

“It was. Because they’d given him, you know, a few weeks. But he held on for _months_. A fucking medical miracle him hanging on for that long. To spite me, you know? He did it to spite me.” I stare at my knees in slight confusion. “And then he died.”

“I don’t know what I’d do if my dad died,” he then reflects, like his hypothetical loss can be compared to my dad, which wasn’t loss. More like freedom. It’s just... confusing freedom that kind of is in the shape of loss. “I don’t see my dad that much, but if he died...”

“Family is overrated. So, so overrated. Friendship and love too, it’s all overrated. People say it gives life meaning – no, it doesn’t. It gives life _baggage_. That’s it: baggage. But me, I’m free. Free, free, free. I do what I please whenever I please, I answer to no one, man. No one. I am my own family, I am my own friend, I am my own lover.” He snorts at this, and I add, “Okay, fine, ha ha. Maybe not the last one or I guess everyone would be their own lover.” I take another slug, feel the alcohol burn my throat. I look at a road sign. “Are we going the right way?”

“Yeah.”

“Alright then. Alright. And another thing, man, another – Everyone says that we have to make life count, that it’s special. Well, what if it’s not? You know? What if it isn’t? Why are we pressured to achieve things? And I say that as someone who has achieved a lot. There are billions of people in the world. We can’t all be special. We can’t all be rockstars. Most of us have to and should aspire to be mediocre, right? And support the structures that enable the privileges of the special people. Right? _Right?_ And – Wait. Where was I...?” I rub my face that feels numb. “Man, I’m drunk.”

“Yup,” Sisky says in agreement.

But I still have so much to say and so much to drink, keep the monologue going, anything, something, to forget his face.

* * *

When I wake up, the sun is high up and blinding. I’ve slept through its bright light blissfully – it’s Sisky’s hand shaking my shoulder that disturbs my slumber.

I blink, disorientated, feeling like shit. “What?” I ask, my voice rough with an alcoholic burn. The car hums steadily, and Sisky stops shaking me, hand now back on the wheel as we drive slowly.

“I said we’re nearly here.”

I wipe at my mouth, sitting up straight. I don’t remember falling asleep. I remember little of anything but I feel like I’ve been gone for ages.

My neck hurts like hell, and I rub at it as I try to figure out what’s going on. Vague, vague memories from last night start rolling in. I remember the show, and I remember watching the band, Jon and the new guys and then Brendon. Standing on his own two feet. Reborn. I remember the aching burn in my chest.

I remember running away.

I just couldn’t.

“Are we home yet?” I ask because it’s the middle of the day and we should definitely be home by now. I look at the long row of spacious suburban houses on both sides of the wide road. This isn’t Maine. “Where are we?”

“You’ll see.”

“Are we in America?”

“You remember us crossing the border, right?”

“Yeah,” I say groggily. I must have passed out shortly after. This doesn’t look like Canada, anyway, but it’s nice to know what country one is in. “Sisky, what the hell?”

Christmas decorations are all over the houses. Sisky slows down, peering at house numbers. I look around, baffled. I’ve never been this confused. Ever.

“Here we are.” He parks the car outside one of the houses. It’s the biggest one on the street, two floors, expensive-looking, white paint, large windows. It has no Christmas decorations out front. “Come on,” Sisky says, getting out quickly. I follow, even more confused.

The air outside is cold after the warmth of the car. All of my limbs are stiff from the awkward position in which I slept, and the alcohol pulsing in my system doesn’t help either. I still feel disorientated and sleepy as I roll my shoulders, try to get all the tensed up muscles and knots to loosen. Sisky’s already walking on the path to the door of the house, but he stops to wait for me.

I eye the house worriedly as I approach it. “Where are we? Whose place is this? What time is it? How long have we been driving?”

“I drove all night and morning,” he says, and only then do I realise how _exhausted_ he looks. We’re somewhere in the Midwest if the houses are anything to go by. Sisky still has energy, though, and he’s smiling as he now rings the doorbell.

“I demand to know where we are,” I hiss. I don’t like surprises.

“Well, I need to go home for Christmas, take a break from this research business,” he explains like this all makes sense and I should know this. “But I’ll be back after New Year’s. I figured I should drop you off before I go, though.”

Drop me off _where_?

He rings the doorbell again, and I look at the baby blue Cadillac on the driveway with its long hood and sharp angles.

The door opens just then, as I’m hovering behind Sisky, confused, hungover and cold.

Oh.

Spencer looks at Sisky first, confused, and then he looks at me and nearly takes a step back. Sisky just beams and looks back and forth between me and my former best friend.

“Ryan?” Spencer asks slightly disbelievingly, like maybe he’s stuck in a dream.

“Um. Hi?” I offer. The kid drove to fucking Cincinnati. _The kid drove to fucking Cincinnati._

“I’m Sisky,” Sisky says and grabs Spencer’s hand, shaking it. “I recommend making some coffee, Ryan’s hungover.” He sounds sympathising. “Also, Mr. Smith, sir, you are like – wow. Like whoa. You know?” Sisky is still shaking Spencer’s hand. Spencer looks different: the thick moustache he had for a few years has now been joined by a full on beard.

“I’m confused,” Spencer says, pulling his hand back, eyeing Sisky like he’s looking at a retarded monkey.

“Me too,” I cut in.

“Well,” Sisky says, addressing Spencer, “you’re alone for Christmas, Ryan was going to be alone for Christmas, so I figured you two could spend it together!” He smiles like this is all he’s asked of Santa this year, oh please, Santa, please, _please_.

I blink. What?

“I should go,” I say quickly as I realise the setup, motioning back at the car. I think my own confusion is clear enough for Spencer to realise that this was not my plan at all. I wouldn’t just – barge in here, I wouldn’t _expect_ Spencer to want me here, I certainly – “Sorry about this, Spence.”

“No!” Spencer says, however. “No, man, you should come in.” He doesn’t break eye contact with me. He shrugs. “Since you’re here. God, you look like _shit_.”

“Yeah, well at least I still know how to shave,” I bite back. He’s lost that weight he gained during the divorce, though. He was so miserable for so long, but now he looks like he’s back in shape, and his beard isn’t a hobo-beard either but neatly trimmed, and it suits him. The tips of his hair brush his jaw line, and he looks rejuvenated somehow.

“I need to go,” Sisky then announces, but he ogles at Spencer lovingly nonetheless. Spencer looks weirded out. “Hopefully we’ll get to sit down at some point, Mr. Smith. Spencer. _Spence_.” He seems to be testing out the waters, and Spencer quirks a single ‘excuse me?’ eyebrow. Sisky flushes slightly. “Anyway... See you later.” Sisky smiles at me brightly but tiredly, and then turns back and heads for the car.

“You shouldn’t be driving!” I call after him, frowning.

“I’ll be fine!” he calls out, lifting a hand as a goodbye.

I’m almost embarrassed when I say, “Hang on,” to Spencer and then run after Sisky like I’m worried or something. Which I am not. He’s on the other side of the car, driver’s door open. He looks at me quizzically.

“You spent the past – night and morning driving here. You should _not_ be driving to Chicago without getting some rest.”

“I’ve got a friend in town. I’m gonna take a nap at his place before heading home.”

“Well, I – Okay, then. I guess.” I move my weight from one leg to the other, taking in this kid who’s such a piece of work. “How did you know where Spencer lives?”

He shrugs. “The same way I knew where you live: went through Vicky’s address book when she left her handbag in the room with me for four minutes. Then she came back with her lawyers, trying to scare me into not writing my book.” He rolls his eyes like _that_ was time wasted.

I frown. “Wait. You’re still writing it?”

He looks slightly taken aback. “Well... yeah. I thought I was, anyway.” A momentary insecurity flickers on his face. “If that’s alright with you.”

I sigh, looking from his hopeful face back to the house, where Spencer is now leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, watching us intently. “You can’t just write whatever you feel like, you know. That biography would hurt people.” 

“Life hurts people,” he corrects me, and I guess he’s got a point. But it’s a bad idea. I don’t want my life in print because then that’s it – it’s official, it cannot be changed. And maybe I need to believe that there still is time to change this all.

“God, fine.” I give in. At last. I’m tired of fighting, and so he’s won. “Fine. But you know there will be restrictions and editing and a lot of shit you cannot say, right? But I’ll, uh... I’ll call Vicky. Work something out with her. Control what you’re doing. Make it official.”

Sisky blinks, shocked, and then he stares at me with shining eyes. “Make... me being your biographer official?”

“No. No, you’re _not_ my biographer. You’re writing a biography of me, but –”

“Will I get to interview everyone now? Properly, too?”

“Well – Fine, you can interview people but just – There will be rules! And you need to be polite, you can’t ask them rude questions and you need to respect their boundaries,” I list, and he gets this shit eating grin on his face. It’s too much for me to bear, the way his enthusiasm shines warmth and such – such _love?_ I feel nauseous and it’s not just the alcohol. “Okay, fuck off to Chicago, kid. You’re getting on my nerves.”

“Merry Christmas, Ryan.” He’s still beaming. “I’ll see you next year.” He is nearly jumping out of his skin as he gets in the car. I roll my eyes at him and walk back to the house, not noting how the sudden _silence_ already feels foreign, like I somehow got used to him.

“So that was Sisky, huh?” Spencer asks when I reach him, and together we watch the car take off.

“Yeah. He’s my biographer.”

“No shit.” We then look at each other, and Spencer breaks into one of those stunning smiles of his. “It’s fucking good to see you, Ry.”

“Yeah. You too,” I say nearly bashfully. He pats my shoulder and moves aside to let me in. I nudge him with my shoulder as I pass.

“ _God_ , you stink of alcohol. Where the hell you been?”

“Canada.”

“That explains it.”

He closes the door, and while I know that I am returning to him as a broken man on the run, I still feel myself smile for the first time in seven months.


	4. The Way He Moves

He smiles against my stomach wickedly, pleased with himself. He sucks on the skin below my belly button too hard, and I hiss and moan. My body feels over-stimulated and overworked, and he hasn’t even let me touch him yet. “Bren,” I breathe out, and he hums disinterestedly, working his way down. His nose presses into my pubic hair, and he inhales deeply, not even trying to hide it. I couldn’t be any harder for him.

He doesn’t say anything.

His tongue starts moving upwards from the base of my cock, slowly, _slowly_ licking me. And he’s got this wicked grin on his lips, this self-satisfied smirk as he looks up at me. I’m wrecked and he knows it. I’m his and he knows it. He slowly twirls his tongue around the swollen head, getting me wet. His nails dig into the top of my thigh harder. And he’s so fucking beautiful when his lips finally stretch around the head of my aching cock, his burning brown eyes locked with mine. Like he wants to know I’m watching.

My entire body twitches when his hot mouth moves over my flesh, and after a few teasing bobs he begins to suck and suck, eyelids fluttering as he goes in deeper. “Shit,” I hiss, my hands tangling in his hair. His cheeks hollow, the pressure around my cock tightens, and pleasure curls up in me. “Fuck, baby, that’s so good,” I breathe out helplessly.

But he knows that, anyway.

And then, suddenly, he’s on his back beneath me, legs spread, and I’m pushing into him. His mouth drops open, but he makes no sound. His fingers dig into the small of my back, urging me on, and he’s so tight around me. His eyes are dark and he stares at me like he’s mine, and that makes me retreat and push in harder. But still he makes no sound. And that’s confusing to me, seems out of place, because god knows I can make him moan. I almost stop to ask if he’s alright, but the pleasure is there, on his face. Maybe I just need to force it out of him.

And so I begin to fuck him hard, just how he likes it. And he shifts his hips, gives better access. He looks away, cheeks flushed, sweat forming on his forehead. His brows knit together, eyes closing as he feels the pleasure of me in him, undoing us both. And I breathe hard, keep the rhythm steady, say, “Fucking hell” and “Shit, that’s so” and “Bren, god.” And he breathes in deep, like he’s drowning, almost, and I lean in close, my lips dragging over his cheek.

Just as my lips are about to brush his, everything stops. I’m still in him, buried in so deep, but his hands on my hips are commanding, telling me not to move. I breathe unevenly, confused. His mouth hovers over my ear.

“This,” he says at last, his voice dead, clinical, wrong, the words whispered, “is killing me.”

And that’s when I wake up.

As usual.

* * *

Spencer waits at the baggage claim, looking tired after the flight. Neither one of us has gone to bed yet – it’s only nine in the morning, so of course we’re still up. Normally we’d be about to retire, but now we’re expected to stay up. I smoke languidly as we watch suitcases roll by... roll by... roll by...

The terminal area is busy with people returning from their holidays. Spencer signed someone’s book in the men’s room and a few people have come over to shake my hand. Now I send them away with a glare and wonder _why_ I refused Vicky’s offer of a private jet. Now we’re here with the commoners, no longer in the safety of first class, and everyone wants a piece of us. We thought this would be less conspicuous.

Well, we were wrong about that.

People are not surprised to see me. They’re shocked and star-struck and stuttering, sure, but my existence is no longer a surprise, not after Montreal when I was spotted, and the entire world knows about it now. It made the papers. Said that I probably live up there these days.

“There it is,” Spencer says and goes to get his green suitcase that’s bulging. I have nothing because, well, I showed up at his door with nothing to begin with and whatever necessities I bought I no longer need. He now leans slightly to one side as he carries the heavy suitcase, and we keep our heads low as we make our way through people. Some recognise us, some don’t. I nervously suck in smoke and avoid eye contact. And, I’ve learned in my years in the spotlight, if you walk fast and radiate ‘get away from me’, a lot of people do just that. The respectable ones, anyway. “It’s nice being back in New York,” Spencer says as we walk out to the waiting lounge. “When was the last time you were here?”

“A long time ago.” I scan the masses waiting to welcome relatives, and then I spot her: a rabbit fur coat over a black mini dress, orange tights and a hair band to match. Her hair’s slightly longer but still the familiar silky looking brown, and she seems to notice me the same time I do her. She doesn’t _look_ like a housewife and she doesn’t _look_ like a mother, but then again, she’s never been that type. She breaks into a grin.

We walk over, and she’s got her arms wide open, and I step into the embrace easily. She squishes me against her and says, “Well, would you look at this fucker?” She’s beaming from ear to ear, and I let myself smile.

“Good to see you, Vicky.” I pull back and say, “You know Spencer, of course.”

“Of course.”

They shake hands. Vicky says, “We’ve got a car waiting to –”

Someone clears their throat loudly and demandingly. I look to our side and only then notice Sisky. Vicky kind of steals the spotlight, but there he is with a big, hopeful smile of his own.

“Oh. Hey,” I remark.

“Hey,” he grins, making googly eyes at Spencer, who is still fascinating and new. I’m not so new anymore. “So, well... here I am.” He opens up his arms with a hopeful look in his eyes. Vicky looks at me. Spencer looks at me.

“Uh, well,” I say, “we should not stand here all day.” His arms thankfully drop. “Um. Good to see you, kid.”

He smiles a little, my rejection having dispirited him none. “You too.”

Righto.

Vicky takes the lead, then, and takes us to the car waiting outside the terminal.

Our business in New York is varied. Spencer just felt like stopping here for a day before taking off, I have to meet up with my lawyers and management to take care of business, and Sisky is here to sign the contract on writing my biography. Spencer is staying at my place while Sisky is staying in a hotel, and he tells us extensively about how fancy the place is, four stars and all. I don’t know how he conducted his stalking before, but his project is now being funded and dictated and censored by my people. This means nice hotels and transportation – no more hitch-hiking and sleeping at bus stations.

“You look better,” Sisky observes as our car is stuck in traffic. Did I look bad before somehow? Maybe he sees the confusion on my face because he adds, “Less frowny.”

Spencer manages to suppress a grin. I huff but say nothing.

From beside the kid, Vicky asks, “What did you crazy kids get up to over the holidays?” She’s got her cigarette holder between her lips, and she’s quirking an eyebrow at us.

Spencer shrugs, looking at me. “Yeah, we just... drank a lot of beer and listened to a lot of music and talked about life.”

This nicely sums up what we did, and though it sounds simple or maybe even boring, it probably was the best time I’ve had in years. I’m not telling anyone that, though. But sometimes with an old friend you can’t help but wonder if the only reason you hang out is because you’ve just known each other for so long, and not because you actually like each other that much. I’ve known Spencer since I was a kid, and so I’ve doubted the sincerity of our affections.

But Spencer’s a great guy. We get each other on levels no one will ever be able to mimic. He’s funny, he’s smart, he’s talented and he’s a fuck up, and being together for the obnoxious holidays that are intended to make social failures like us feel bad was probably the best thing I could have done.

Instead of sitting alone in that house with nothing but memories for company.

“It was crazy,” I say monotonously to make sure Sisky doesn’t start asking questions about it.

But of course he does.

“What did you do for New Year’s? Any resolutions? Did you get anything for Christmas?”

He’s full of questions. Still. I swear I could answer a thousand questions, and he’d have a thousand more.

“Hey,” Vicky now cuts in, eyes thinning at Sisky. “This is not an official interview, cut it out.”

Sisky glances at her, looking subdued. Huh. Funny how it never works when _I_ snap at him.

For New Year’s, we... well, we were babysitting, really. Suzie’s four and a half now. She’s tiny. Less tiny than she used to be. She’s got these big blue eyes and light brown hair and she laughs brightly and runs around and falls down and bawls her eyes out, and Spencer picks her up and sooths her down and dries her tears, and I stand there staring at her like she’s an alien. She’s so much like Spencer. Facial expressions. Mannerisms.

She is one of the most peculiar creatures I’ve ever met.

It makes me feel bad being around such innocence and beauty. Afraid of tainting it. I think I was more subdued around her than she was shy towards a stranger like me.

First time I thought that maybe Spencer hadn’t fucked up by accidentally getting Haley pregnant.

Haley’s not happy about Spencer leaving, but he’ll be back. Of course he’ll be back.

That’s what we all keep telling ourselves, but his suitcase looks full to me.

Vicky told me on the phone that Sisky had insisted on coming to the airport to meet us, but the car now drops him off at his hotel. We’re all meeting later, though, Vicky having booked a trendy bar or another for a private function, something suitable for someone of my fame. She always knows those kinds of things. Sisky waves bye, looking slightly saddened by our brief encounter.

When the car takes off again, Vicky blows out smoke and says, “You’re smart, Ry. This whole book business? Smart. It’ll sell like hotcakes. And this Sisky guy? God, he’ll praise you to no end! There’s all this buzz now after your Montreal appearance. Biographies of you will sell.”

“Buy one for your grandmother,” I note sourly.

“Smart move,” she only repeats. One thing about her is different, though: the ring on her finger. A big fat diamond on it. She did well, considering. As if somehow reading my thoughts, she adds, “Matthieu said to apologise that he won’t join us for dinner as he has to be at the theatre.”

“Must be time-consuming to produce Broadway musicals.”

She only shrugs. I absently look through the tinted window at New York, New York, my former home. It looks the same: cars everywhere, people everywhere, long, endless streets with infinite rows of tall buildings. I forgot how busy it is, how full of life it is. The contrast with Machias couldn’t be any bigger.

“We’re meeting your lawyers tomorrow. There’s some paperwork that I had dropped off at your place earlier,” she says, and I only hum, listening with half an ear. “There’s a message there from Jon, too.” This _does_ attract my attention, and she looks slightly guilty under my gaze. “I didn’t feel like disturbing your holidays with it.”

Spencer’s pretending not to be listening to the conversation, although he is. I clear my throat, ignore the way my heart’s started racing because Jon, well, is Jon, but the people he associates himself with... “What’d it say?”

She makes quotation marks in the air. “‘Why didn’t you come say hi?’” She drops her hands. “That’s all. There’s a number, too. I guess it’s for his new place in Chicago.”

And then we look away from each other, conversation over and done with.

My refuge in Machias or, well, in the world has taken on a new shape: not forced exile but voluntary. Because they know now, all of them: that I am alive and well. Because I _was_ seen in Montreal, I was chased by fans, and the radio stations heard of it and the press heard of it and the band heard of it.

Whether I’m alive or dead is no longer contested. I guess that’s something.

But now I get the uncomfortable vision of the news reaching His Side, maybe the following day or the day itself. ‘Ryan Ross was here, man,’ as they’ve gotten onto the tour bus. And how they all stop slightly, shocked and surprised, and Jon knows what happened between Bren and I, he knows, so he looks over to Brendon and –

And he still asks why I didn’t come say hi.

Because I could not bring myself to face Brendon. That’s why.

Jon seems to not understand that. And if he said to his bandmates, ‘Ryan was here, man, what the fuck?’, and Brendon didn’t even say, ‘Well, maybe it’s because of…’ then it just underlines how the world has moved on while I stayed still.

How I’ve been left behind.

But it’s good here, in the backseat. Letting someone else drive.

Not thinking about what a fool of myself I made by going to see him. What he must think of me, lurking in the shadows... No. I’ve spent weeks obsessing about that and, no, I have to stop. Even Spencer said so. It’s not like Brendon left me a message, not like he’s gotten in touch. He knows that I was there, and he has said nothing of it.

Not that I expected anything different.

Vicky comes up to the apartment with us. The driver carries Spencer’s suitcase, and I take in the familiarity of the stairwell. How the paint on the handrail is still peeling between the third and fourth floor. Vicky gets out keys when we get to the top because yeah, I don’t even have those anymore. I left her in charge of things.

“Well,” she says, unlocking the door. “Welcome back, even if it’s only for a few days.” She walks in first, and Spencer follows curiously. He’s never been here. The driver leaves the suitcase by the door, tips his hat and heads back down to wait for Vicky.

I’m the last one to walk in hesitantly. I remember the last time I stood here, well over a year ago, fresh back from tour, and the horror of it, of the loss, hitting me. I think it stayed behind, has been trapped within these walls since.

But it all looks the same and so innocent. There are no coats in the coat rack, no shoes littering the floor. The mirror on the wall is covered by a sheet, however. I slowly walk in further.

Vicky’s walked to the end of the short hallway that opens up to the living room. She’s got her hands on her hips. “It should be like you remember it. We covered the furniture to keep it nice and clean, and a cleaning lady comes around once a month to dust the place.” Spencer’s already sitting on a sheet covered couch, making himself comfortable. “I’ll get someone to come around to uncover the furniture. You decided to drop by on such short notice.”

“That’s alright,” I mutter, looking at my place like I’ve never seen it before. Spencer’s up now, and he walks past Vicky and I. I let him browse because he’s allowed to. He opens the door to the bedroom, closes it again, goes to the next door, lets out a pleased hum and enters the music room. I keep my hands in my pockets.

Vicky watches him go and says, “So about tomorrow. Are you sure you want to sell off that Bismarck cabin? We can cancel the meeting if you’ve changed your mind.”

I say, “That’s alright.”

She shrugs. We hear a bang from the music room, and I go to the doorway to investigate. Spencer’s pulled the sheet off of the black grand piano. The stool is empty.

And I say, “That’s alright.”

* * *

I figure it’s less painful to see my old friends all at once than individually, and so I saunter into a Greenwich Village bar late that night, reporters out front snapping my picture. I don’t wave back, but Spencer does.

Only those on the guest list are allowed in, but it seems like every fucker on it has decided to come. The small, dimly lit bar is full, bar tables everywhere covered with half-finished drinks, a few guests having taken themselves to the dance floor with chequered floor tiles. Everyone present is smartly dressed, is sexy in that famed and well-off way. I breathe in the smell of cigarettes and weed. I forgot life could be like this.

It’s not a ‘Welcome back’ party because everyone knows I’m only dropping by. It’s more of a ‘Congrats on being alive’ get together, and I hug friends I haven’t seen in a few years, pat backs, accept drinks, but make little conversation. It feels forced somehow – not for them, but for me. They are delighted to see me and expect the feeling to be mutual.

For the most part, it isn’t.

Coming into contact with them is just another painfully obvious reminder of how our lives differ. Because Eric is present with a new girlfriend and some guy who now co-runs the record store chain with him, and Greta is also here with her husband Butcher, and so is Patrick, good old Patrick accompanied by a handful of plus ones, which Vicky must have allowed only because she gets along with Patrick so well. Who wouldn’t? And while it is obvious that a lot of these people who had me in common have not seen each other in a long time, they all tell me what they’ve been up to, talk about new friends and lovers and jobs and ideas and thoughts. And me? “God, Ryan, what have _you_ been up to?” I just say, “Not much. I went away.” And they look awkward and change the subject.

A pleasant number of drinks later, a finger pokes at my shoulder blade and I turn around to face Sisky. I nodded him hello when we got in, and he’s been busy talking to the guests. “Oh hey,” I now say, and the people I was talking to get the hint and leave us to it. Sisky’s been behaving well, considering his tendency to impose himself on people. “What’s happening?”

“Everything!” he says with wide eyes like ‘do you realise I’m hanging out with the in crowd of New York?’ I do, I suppose.

I saw him talking to Patrick so I ask, “You and Patrick get along well?”

“Really well,” he enthuses, nodding. “He’s such a nice guy!” We both look over to Patrick chatting away happily to a crowd that he’s attracted. He’s become a distinguished session musician in my absence, rubbing elbows with all the big names. He toured the US with The Rolling Stones last summer, playing keyboards for them, and now he’s got a solo album in the works. The Whiskeys might have been a short-lived band, but it made a star out of him nonetheless. “He agreed to let me interview him soon!”

“Ah.”

I’m surprised by how most people are _not_ surprised by the biography business. Only Clifton told me flat out that he thought it was a self-absorbed, ridiculous enterprise, but others seem to think it logical. ‘He’s Ryan Ross. Only makes sense to write a biography of him’. And Vicky likes the money.

“Do you think I’ll get to interview Spencer this week?” Sisky asks, now looking at Spencer longingly instead. He’s at the bar, laughing away with Eric. They know each other from way back when, the early Followers days in LA.

“Probably not. He’s leaving for London.”

Sisky freezes up at this. “London? As in London, _England_?”

“Are there other Londons?” I ask, trying to sound bored and indifferent while in truth it was a surprise for me too.

A part of me is confused as to why Spencer never mentioned it to me until I was there, that when I thought he was being idle like me, he wasn’t being idle at all. But Spencer said that he didn’t want to say anything until he was absolutely sure about his co-producer/guru position for an English band that I’ve never heard of: The Police or whatever. Some relatively new band. Spencer played me their first album, though, and it was alright. And he knows their producer who asked him for help and, well – Getting Spencer Smith’s opinion counts. A lot. And he’s beyond pleased to be finally doing something musical again, his blue eyes sparkled as he talked about getting back into a studio, recording music even if it wasn’t his.

No more living on Followers royalties. Finally doing something for himself.

Hey, I’m happy for him. I am, I am. Good for him.

London’s just far away. Haley agrees, and I had to listen to them bickering over the phone, Haley saying that Spencer was abandoning Suzie since Spencer might be in London for quite a few months. Spencer was cut up about going, though, and I think that even Haley eventually realised that Spencer needs to move on professionally at some point – why not now?

“Well when’s he coming back from London?” Sisky asks, pouting.

“Who knows?” Maybe never. Weekend trips every two weeks for Suzie. Not like we don’t have the money for it. “Spencer’s business is his,” I then conclude, trying to divert Sisky’s thoughts. He will interview Spencer at some point, I’m sure, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to let Sisky dig up the past for Spencer just when he’s attempting to start a new era in his life.

“I guess Spencer can wait a while,” he then concludes. “I mean, I’ll still get _so_ much material for the book. I’m sketching out the chapters and stuff. I think I’ll call one ‘The New York Years’. Catchy, right?”

“Remember what we talked about on the phone last week?” I then ask him, referring to when we briefly chatted before we agreed to meet up over here.

“Oh. Right.” He looks down sheepishly. “Don’t talk to you about the book because you think it’s creepy.”

“Precisely.”

“Anyway, the, uh, book aside, I’ve got a lot to ask you. A lot of things to confirm, get your perspective on. But I don’t have my notes with me, they’re still up in Machias. We left in such a hurry, and I need those notes, and –”

“Come get them, then. I’m going home in two days, anyway.”

“Okay.” He gives me a grateful smile. “And then I can interview you, too, before I come back here and start doing all the other interviews.”

“Joy,” I note, now lighting a new cigarette. His biography won’t be a factual biography but he doesn’t know that yet. I’m not saying it will be fiction, I’m saying that there will be plenty of omissions.

Sisky’s crinkled his nose, and he looks at the crowd around us. “You know, the people I’ve talked to, uh... they all kind of say that you seem better than when they last saw you. Greta, um.” He looks towards my protégée with her long, golden curls and a golden dress to match. She’s more than a protégée now – a Grammy nominee, on the cover of Vogue soon. Butcher listed her accomplishments (the Grammy nomination I was well aware of, though) while Greta just smiled blissfully, saying how good it was to see me. She doesn’t care how famous she is – she’s probably the only person who’d ever be able to remain unaffected by something like that.

“What about Greta?” I prompt.

Sisky shrugs, still looking confused. “She just – I mean, not just her, people insinuate it, but... she just said that you seem better now and, um. That summer before you retired, she just said that it got really bad for you, which is – Well, is weird because I know your dad didn’t pass away until months later, and I have all this archival material from that summer, interviews and press releases where you... You seemed okay. That’s why it was such a shock when the band dissolved and you retired, you know? I just – I feel like I’m missing something?” His tone rises on the question, his eyebrows lifting accordingly.

I suppose to the outside world, to the press and fans, it looked like I was alright. Anyone else, anyone who actually knew me, could see how I was acting out of character. Mechanic like a robot. Not there. Empty inside.

And Greta toured with us all summer so she saw firsthand how I changed. Drew in on myself, stopped talking to them.

“I don’t know why they’d say that,” I lie, and Sisky can tell that I’m lying. He stares at me suspiciously. He’s concerned, too, it’s not just him being a nosy brat, but this is not the time or the place.

Luckily, Vicky comes over just then, mouth a thin line, a stony expression on her face. “Ry,” she says and nods towards the door of the bar. I look past the mobs of people and at a guy in a black leather jacket who’s been stopped by the bouncers. Oh.

I imagine him not being let in, of having to leave when the reporters are there, and they would record his rejection. Public humiliation.

“Was he invited?” I ask Vicky, who looks slightly guilty.

“No. I didn’t – think he’d be interested.”

“Clearly he is.”

Gabe is now arguing with the bouncer, looking into the bar restlessly, an annoyed expression on his face.

“I guess I’ll –” Vicky starts, tone reluctant as ever, but I cut in with, “That’s alright, I’ve got it.”

I push through the crowd – or rather it parts for me as the guests seem to be constantly keeping an eye on my whereabouts – but I stop a safe distance away from the door. “Let him in,” I call out, and the bouncers look my way and immediately stop bickering. Gabe looks at me, stares for a second as if to confirm my existence, huffs, puffs out his chest and walks in. He doesn’t look good. He’s too thin, cheeks too hollow, eyes too dead. Too much drugs, not enough food. His skin is still the familiar golden tone and his hair is still black but it’s not shiny.

An old guilt washes over me now that he’s here. I try so hard not to think about it.

“Does this place have an open bar?” he says as a way of hello, eyeing the bar counter next to us.

I scratch the back of my head awkwardly, avoiding eye contact since he is too. “Uh. Put him on my tab,” I tell the bartender, who nods.

“Well, that’s a start,” Gabe says and then pushes past me. Once he’s taken the entire whisky bottle from the bartender, he disappears into the crowd. He almost bumps into Vicky, then, and both freeze, but then Gabe brushes it off and I lose sight of him.

“Huh,” Spencer’s voice comes from beside me. He passes me the cigarette that he’s smoking, and I take it gratefully. He’s looking after Gabe, too. “I guess that’ll be awkward.”

I blow out smoke nervously. “That I fully expect it to be.”

And Spencer doesn’t even know the entire story.

* * *

I give it a few hours, some time, some reflection and thought, before I join Gabe in a booth at the back of the bar. He’s got two ashtrays and both are full, but his whiskey bottle isn’t empty – in fact, most of it is still there. If he wanted to get so shitfaced that he forgets about it all, then he’d have downed the bottle already.

He quirks his eyebrow at me as I sit down opposite him. “Your Highness is too kind,” he says, faux-bashfully.

“Fuck you.” My tone is tired, has no bite in it. “If you didn’t want to see me, you wouldn’t be here.”

“How could I not be here?” He digs out a cigarette and a lighter. “All of New York is talking about it.” He struggles to ignite a flame, swears, but then manages it. The initial burst of fire lights up his face and makes him look older than he is. His eyes move over the people in the bar and then he nods towards someone. I follow his gaze until my eyes land on Sisky, who is pretending not to be looking our way. “That kid.” Gabe sucks in smoke. “Tried to interview me before Christmas. Someone said he’s your biographer. That he lives with you now.”

“The hell he does.”

“Either way, how is he the one who gets you out of hiding?” He shakes his head. “Tell me one thing, man. One honest thing. Were you really _that_ lonely?”

He makes eye contact with me for the first time since he arrived. I feel inclined to look away but then can’t, facing the onslaught of unpleasant memories. “Yes.”

He scoffs. Contempt. Arrogance. Anger.

“I have a question too.” I set my beer bottle on the table. “Do you really have such low self-esteem that you need to come here and torture yourself some more? Or did you maybe come see if I’d changed my mind about the whole ‘us’ thing?” My tone is just on this side of mocking, and his eyes thin dangerously. “Hey, if you’re going to be an asshole to me, then why not be one in return, right?”

“I just asked _if_ –”

“He –” I start but then take a deep breath. I look around to make sure no one is within earshot. “The kid makes it easier for _me_ to live with myself, alright? He makes all of my mistakes sound like accomplishments. I fuck up The Followers, he thinks I was too talented for the bunch. I cheat on girlfriends, he thinks the girls weren’t special enough. He makes excuses for me. I feel less like shit when there’s someone left who’s willing to see some good in me. And if he knew, which he doesn’t, but if he knew how I fucked you around, then he’d just say that, well, I was broken-hearted. That I was a mess because of Brendon, and maybe that wasn’t the best time for you to –” I stop myself, exhale heavily. It was one big mistake, that summer. Gabe looks indignant, but for all I know this is the last time we’ll ever see each other. The last time I get to try and set things straight and apologise, so I don’t waste time on idle chitchat. “What I’m trying to say is that... maybe I just need someone who adores me a little.”

“That’s narcissistic.”

“I didn’t say that it wasn’t.” After a pause, I add, “Maybe I... think that if I let this one kid do whatever the hell he wants, it redeems a lot of the shit I’ve done to other people.”

“Well it doesn’t.”

“Fine.” I rake my fingers through my long hair restlessly. I was always good at confrontation – telling band members, fans and managers where to stick it, brushing off lovers, telling them what’s what. Now it’s like I finally realise there are consequences, even if they are indirect ones, even when it’s not _all_ my fault. Consequences like the bags under his eyes. Confrontation is now uncomfortable. “I know what Sisky would say about you and me. He’d say that... I shouldn’t have slept with you that summer. Even if it only was those few times when I was too drunk to stop myself. I shouldn’t have done it, but _you_ should have told me to fuck off too. Because you had – had feelings for me, whatever they were, and I was in love with someone else and you knew it. So we both fucked it up, alright? We both messed it up. And we both can be excused. That’s what the kid would say.”

“I can be more excused than you.”

“Can you?” I ask and now do what he did, nodding towards a certain someone. Vicky’s got her back to us, but Gabe immediately looks more closed off. Vicky still doesn’t know that Gabe and I slept together a couple of times. It’s crucial that she never finds out either – it was just some drunken sex between two confused people who didn’t know what they felt for whom. And I still don’t know where Vicky stood in all of it, either. It was only much later that I even found out that back then – when the Whiskeys were formed, when Brendon and I got back together, when we recorded our only album – Gabe and Vicky were fucking. Casually, sure, unofficially, unsystematically, but fucking nonetheless. And we all thought that Gabe was being sexist and teasing her to get into her pants again. The first time they drunkenly hooked up was well-recorded, after all, but as far as we knew it stopped there. It didn’t, I later found out. Gabe flirting with her non-stop was probably just some messed up foreplay that we all missed, a way to push Vicky’s buttons.

The little you know about the people you think you know.

“Her husband couldn’t make it tonight,” I say.

Gabe instantly makes a face, and I’m relieved that he lets me direct the conversation elsewhere. Away from him and I. Because I said that I shouldn’t have fucked him, and that’s as much of an apology as he’ll ever get. What more can I do about it now?

“Monsieur Matthieu Dupont,” Gabe spits, trying to sound as French as he can. “With his imperfect English and atrocious accent and _all_ the ego of a Broadway producer. Monsieur Dupont who likes his fucking musicals and says Fred Astaire is his idol. If there’s a man I hate, it’s him. What did Vicky ever see in him? And then their kid, Alex, Alexander, even that has to be said in a French fucking accent with him – Alexawndro. It’s Alexander, but does that stop him? No. The name is spelled differently in French, but nope. He has to say it his way too. Fucking pretentious fuck.”

He goes on a rant, and I let him. I’ve never met the guy, didn’t attend their shotgun wedding either. He’s a man of influence, in any case, Mr. Dupont. He’s successful and rich and has friends in high places – Vicky caught a big fish, intentionally or not. Whereas Gabe, well. I think that summer it became clearer and clearer to him that his fling with Vicky was never going to go anywhere, and he despaired, and I fucked him, and he despaired more, and I vanished, and he was left rootless and directionless, and I was no longer there, and Vicky was no longer there. And now he’s here, and his hands shake slightly as he holds the cigarette. He’s strung out from whatever drugs he now needs. Hardly father material or husband material.

When he’s bitching about Matthieu, he at least isn’t having a go at me. And that’s something. It’s not forgiveness that we share a table and thoughts and drinks, but it’s appeasement. People try to join us frequently – it’s half of Ryan Ross and The Whiskeys in one booth – but I wave them off. And every time it happens, Gabe pauses for a while, like he’s expecting me to ask them to join us, for me to choose anyone, anyone at _all_ over him and his company.

But I don’t.

And the bitter and angry tone fades little by little, gradually, and when it’s two in the morning and he laughs for the first time, I think he’d get it.

How much it means to have someone who believes in you when everyone else has stopped.

 

* * *

Spencer hums _YMCA_ under his breath as he closes his suitcase, ready to leave for the airport. I sit on one of the dining table chairs and watch him quietly.

“That song is terrible,” I say at last, just to say something, fill up the sense of him leaving.

“It’s the gayest song I have ever heard,” he concedes and then looks up at me. “I thought you’d like it.”

“Fuck off,” I say, and he smirks.

He looks around the room, though it’s not like he unpacked much to begin with. The protective sheets are gone but will be put back soon enough. “Have you seen any of my socks? I swear they’ve all vanished.”

I’d suspect Sisky to be behind this – Spencer feet smell or something crazy, I don’t even know – but Sisky hasn’t been around yet. He’s got his meeting with the lawyers today. Maybe now, actually, who knows?

“You want an extra pair?” I offer, and he nods. That way he doesn’t have to go sock hunting the second he gets to London. I’m sure he’ll have more interesting and urgent things to do.

He follows me to the bedroom, talking about the flight time and the apartment in London where he’ll be moving into – staying, he means, just staying. And I say that it all sounds good, while handing him a pair of black socks.

He’s looking over my shoulder and onto my made bed. When I follow his gaze, I see what he sees: the large picture frame, face upwards on the bed. The black and white shot of a boy, taken by someone else.

“Just something I found when I got home this morning,” I explain. I don’t even know where I had hidden it, but whoever came to clean up the apartment and fill the fridge found the frame and placed it on the dining table. His smile greeted me upon arrival, like I always wanted it to. Head tilted downwards, a shy smile aimed at his feet. Smiling because of the man he chose over me.

“Sure.” Spencer smiles slightly, but it’s forced. We haven’t talked about that. Brendon. We’ve talked of him, sure, but we haven’t talked about him. I close the bedroom door after us, slightly ashamed.

I know that it’s not over for me, but that – That just takes time. Spencer and Haley aren’t together, but they’re certainly not over even if it’s clear that they are never getting back together either. So it’s alright that I’m not over it, it’s – It’s fine. And His Side is back on tour now, and he’s back to being his own different person somewhere out there. And my thoughts find him all the time, and I have these fucking messed up dreams about him that I’ve never told anyone about.

It’s not over for me, but I’m sick of people and myself thinking that I need to be.

I’m trying, though. I am. Admitting that I’m not over him is the first step like alcoholics anonymous or when I got addicted to codeine but he forced me to clean up my act. He’s just another addiction to shake off.

Spencer packs the extra socks and closes his suitcase. He looks towards the window and asks, “So you’re sure you want to go back? To that house of yours.”

“It’s where I live.”

“Is it?” He quirks an eyebrow at me, but then lets it slide. “You could stay here, you know. A lot of people miss you here.”

I smirk at him. “You don’t know that. You’re speculating. You’d just feel more at ease knowing that I’m surrounded by people who look after me.”

“So?”

“So maybe it’s time I look after myself.” I’ve always been depending on others, clinging onto them. Spencer, Keltie, even now I depend on Vicky for a lot of things... “I’ll be fine this time. I’ll survive. Like a virus.”

“Every virus needs a host.”

“Look around,” I note, and he rolls his eyes. “I’ll be fine, man.” I don’t want him worrying about me. Not anymore. No, I’m turning a new page now, a page of not playing the martyr, bleeding all over the place and yelling, ‘Forgive them, Lord, for they know not –’

One can watch such an act only for so long.

I will go back to Machias, but I am not retreating or escaping. I am going back because I want to. Because as great as the past few weeks with Spencer and everyone else has been, a part of me yearns to be back in the comfort of my house. Where time stands still. Where I don’t have to remember how much I actually miss everyone. I will go there and learn how to make myself feel better.

The doorbell rings just then.

“Must be the driver,” Spencer says and picks up his suitcase. I offered to go to the airport with him, but he said I didn’t have to.

The driver’s wearing a ridiculous chauffeur’s uniform with the black cap and all, and he takes Spencer’s suitcase with a professional bow. He’s in his mid-twenties, has chocolate eyes and dark brown hair, and he looks good in the uniform, somehow manages to pull it off. I watch him descend the stairs, trying to haul Spencer’s heavy suitcase.

“Well,” Spencer says, tone expectant. Oh he’s leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when he’ll be back again...

“I’ll come downstairs.”

I’m not wearing shoes, however, and my socks feel damp the second I step outside, taking the few steps down onto the sidewalk. It’s a Rolls-Royce that they’ve sent for him, black and sleek. The chauffeur’s putting the suitcase in the trunk.

“I’ll still call,” Spencer says, not really looking me in the eyes.

“Sure. I mean, I know you’ll be busy but –”

“I’ll still call.” This time he looks at me, blue eyes calm and steady. And I believe him.

“Okay.” Deep breath. “Have fun in England, then.”

“I’ll try.” He looks up at my building, all the way up to my windows. “You should stay here.” His tone seems conclusive, like he has now reached this decision. “You shouldn’t go back to Maine. Just stay. Give things time. Start a new band, write some music, hang out with friends...” He makes it sound so simple. He shrugs. The chauffer has opened a door for him but is waiting politely out of earshot. Spencer looks me straight in the eye. “Get yourself a boyfriend.”

I pause for a second, then. We haven’t talked about that either, me and my tendencies.

It appears that Spencer continues to be able to read me with ease.

“Yeah,” I say eventually. “Maybe I should.” I look at the awaiting car and then rush out, “When I talk to my people later, once we’ve settled on selling the Bismarck cabin, I’ll arrange a contribution for Suzie’s college fund. For all the birthdays and Christmases I’ve missed.”

Haley has this whole thing of ‘just because you didn’t even graduate high school but still are famous, Spencer, doesn’t mean that we will let Suzie ride off your fame for all of her life – she will go to college and find her own way’. Funnily enough, Haley, Spencer and I all agree on that. Not that I have any say on Suzie whatsoever, of course.

“You don’t have to, man.”

“I want to. She’s a smart little girl.”

“She is, isn’t she?” he asks, sounding proud. “I still don’t know why you’re so determined to sell that cabin of yours, though.”

“Not mine. It was Dad’s. We’d go up there every year, and he’d get drunk and shoot things. Why the fuck would I keep it?”

I don’t mention how I spent money on getting it renovated, on how I thought that I could start using it, make better memories, visit it when I’m old and retired. How all of that got shot to pieces and how I never want to go there again. Spencer lets it go, though. One mention of my old man, and he lets me get away with nearly anything.

“Well, when the word gets out that the cabin belonged to you, the price will triple.”

“I don’t need the money, man.”

“Yeah, but it’s still nice to have.” He smiles, the corners of his eyes crinkling. We hug briefly. No long goodbyes, no further promises. Go on, then. It’s just thousands of miles away.

And then he’s gone. My socks are wet and uncomfortable as I walk back to my apartment, and he’s gone.

The phone starts to ring just as I walk back in, and I close the door and wonder who still has this number. I don’t bother to hurry on my way to the phone, slowly lifting the receiver to my ear. “Hello?”

“I feel like death,” a voice announces, voice scratchy. I smirk slightly. It’s not my fault if Sisky can’t keep up with well-seasoned drinkers or that he doesn’t know when to just go home. “Last night all blurs together in my mind!”

“It’s called partying.”

“I’m not saying it was a waste of time. I talked to people, I found out all this stuff, man. I just wish that I didn’t feel so shit. God, I’ve got that meeting in two hours, and I think I’m still drunk.” He sighs dramatically. As he talks, I keep the receiver between my head and my shoulder, pulling my wet socks off. Sleep seems like a good idea now.

“Go for a shower, it’ll sober you up a bit.”

“I will, I just – I wanted to talk to you.”

“Okay.” I instantly get a bad feeling.

“Well, I talked to Greta and Butcher, I mean I talked to a lot of people but –” He pauses, and his tone is intrigued and almost boastful. He thinks he’s got big news, but he’s clearly not sure how to feel about it. “Did you know that Brendon really _is_ gay?”

Shit.

I guess the cat’s out of the bag.

* * *

“Shane Valdes,” Sisky says, looking at his notes now that he’s been reunited with them. He took over the kitchen table the second we arrived, and I went upstairs for a shower and have been unwinding from the New York trip since. Home, Machias, my house, my view and my beach and my salty air.

And Sisky.

He stands in the space between the kitchen and the living room, staring at me curled up in my armchair. “Shane Valdes,” he repeats, reading from a piece of paper, demanding my attention. “A native of California, born 1944. Studied photography in UCLA, may or may _not_ have made out with Jim Morrison at a frat party –”

“What?” I cut in.

Sisky stares at me blankly. “Rumours. That was before Jim was all famous.”

“Where the hell do you hear this shit?” I ask irately.

He ignores me and moves on. “Valdes moved to New York in 1975 to pursue his art. He met Ryan Ross of The Followers in late 1976. Ross hired him to film a documentary of his new band’s writing process and their first tour. This documentary, however, was scrapped despite thirty thousand dollars having been spent on the project. From my hazy drunken memory, I seem to recall Greta saying that Valdes was fired. At the time, Valdes was also dating a man named Brendon who most of us have come to know as Brendon Roscoe.” He looks up at me and seems smug. “How’s that for research?”

I give him an impatient smile. “Impressive, sure. Look, everyone knew that Brendon and Shane were dating. I’m mostly surprised you hadn’t managed to find that out yet.”

His brows knit together. “But back in Montreal you told me not to believe the rumours that Brendon was gay!” He stares at me in astonishment. “Did you _lie_ to me?”

“Yes.”

“But why?!”

“None of your business, that’s why. Besides, Brendon’s ex-boyfriends don’t concern my biography whatsoever.”

He glares at me. I glare at him.

Sisky’s been bothering me about this since Greta blurted it out to him. It wouldn’t occur to Greta to keep her mouth shut about it – love is love, she often says. She never understood that Shane and Brendon’s relationship was best to keep secret, just to be on the safe side. And, for whatever reason, it’s captured Sisky’s imagination, but I’ve made no comment on it until now. It’s worrying that he has all this background information on Shane before he even was interested in Shane and, now that Shane is of interest, Sisky only needs to consult his notes for a few hours before producing a sensible bio. It makes me realise that he knows so much more than he lets on, but he’s signed his book deal now. He _has_ to keep his mouth shut about certain things.

It’s like we’ve managed to lock a tornado into a room. We’ve yet to see how successful or unsuccessful that ends up being.

Sisky might act like a spazz and like an innocent puppy, but he’s neither. He wouldn’t have gotten this far if he weren’t a bit cunning. And he’s not letting me get away with this easily either.

“Did you know that they were living together?” he now prompts.

“Were they?”

I sound perfectly disinterested because he sighs. “Why don’t you want to talk about this? You discovered Brendon, I mean – Surely you care at least a little. Don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure. Is that what you want me to say?”

He looks at me with disappointed eyes. Something changed in New York. I can sense it. He still looks at me adoringly, but there’s a hint of restraint and hesitation right there in the corner of his eye that he tries to hide.

Maybe he’s found out something that he doesn’t like.

“Look, what do you want, man?” I keep my book in my lap and stare him down. “The documentary turned out to be a bad idea and, okay, I didn’t get on well with Shane personally. I fired him. It was a dick move, you can put that in the book, but I don’t regret it. And yeah, I got Brendon signed during that time, and yes, they were seeing each other. That hardly affected my professional dealings with either of them.”

His mouth purses disapprovingly. “I just...”

“What?”

“I just feel like there’s something _more_ going on here.”

I turn back to my book. “Well go to New York and investigate, then.” My tone is mocking, and he looks affronted and huffs as he goes back to the kitchen and the mess of his notes. I watch him go from the corner of my eye, uncomfortable. Yes, he is to interview everyone, people who know, but all those people also know that they are not to discuss my private life with Sisky.

Even if Sisky was to find out, however, he can’t put it in the book. It’s there in fine print and legal nonsense, and what it translates as is that Sisky cannot out me in that book of his. He might find out, maybe it’s only a matter of time, but he can’t write about it. And I certainly won’t tell him if I don’t have to. It’s not his business. The book can focus on the bands and the music but leave my love affairs out of it.

The phone starts ringing on the side table next to me, and I look to the grandfather clock and try to figure out what time it is in England. I reach out for the receiver, extending my arm as far as it can go, refusing to actually get up. I just about manage it without making the chair tip over. “Yeah?” I ask as I sink back into my chair.

“So you _are_ back,” Clifton’s voice comes down the line.

“How the hell do you know?”

“Because there’s only one taxi service in town and you used it to get home.”

“Touché.” My eyes fix on Sisky’s form hunching over his notes. He doesn’t seem to be paying attention.

“So where’s my car?”

“Sorry?”

“The car you took when you left for Canada.”

“Oh.” I cover the mouthpiece. “Sisky, what did you do with Clifton’s car?”

Sisky looks up in surprise like he’d forgotten all about that. I had too. “Uh, I left it at my mom’s.”

“It’s in Chicago,” I say, passing on the message. “I’ll pay for it, man, don’t fret.”

“Sure, you buy cars every day.” He pauses for a second. “So the kid is _still_ there?”

“Yeah.” I look over, but Sisky’s absorbed in his notes. “He’s leaving on the bus to Boston tomorrow.”

“Huh. The one that leaves at four?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then.”

And he hangs up.

* * *

We say nothing, just let the record play and smoke the cigarettes. I’ve pulled sheets over my crotch slightly, a half-attempt at decency, but he’s letting it all hang out, lying on his back at the foot of the bed while I occupy the head.

“So how was Christmas?” I ask for the sake of making conversation. We haven’t seen each other in a few weeks, and we haven’t fucked in well over a month. Since we met, we’ve fucked once a week. Thursday. Fuck day.

“The same,” he says. His body is still flushed and sweaty, but he wiped off the come. My own body is still tingling, feeling sated at last. I’m not used to not having sex, so I needed to get off. Clearly so did he, arriving twenty minutes after Sisky had picked up all of his belongings and left. It was an awkward goodbye. I’ll process it later, maybe. Sex has taken priority right now. I’m not missing the kid because his absence allows me to have sex in my own house. Tomorrow, well. I might miss his company tomorrow. “How was yours?” he now returns.

“The same.” I flick the cigarette over the ashtray we’ve placed on the bed.

“Where did you go?”

“Cincinnati. New York.”

“But are you staying here now?”

“Yeah.” I eye his naked form, at the softening cock resting on his well-toned belly. He’s a muscular type, works out and it shows. “In case I do travel, though, you should get yourself back up fucks.”

“There are no fags around here.”

“Except for you.”

“Except for you, too,” he returns easily and keeps smoking languidly. Usually he’d already be gone, but now it’s been a while so we both know that we’re not done yet.

And in this vein I say, “I want to fuck you.”

He smirks at the ceiling. “But it’s your turn to bottom.”

“But I just _did_.”

“You topped the last two times before that kid showed up. Definitely your turn to bottom.”

I roll my eyes. “Oh, we’re keeping score.”

He smirks. “We are. Besides, you like getting fucked.”

“So do you,” I say because nothing is as satisfying as making him come hard, hard, hard when I’m fucking him, make him ask for more of me.

But now we’re talking about fucking, and I like that, talking about it, because it provides me with visuals and ideas and memories, and my skin heats up in expectation. “Fine, then. Fuck me. Do your worst.”

“Oh, I plan to.” He blows out smoke. “Just need another minute.”

“Such a lightweight.” I push the covers away from me and get out of bed, stretching my limbs as I go. “You want a beer then?”

He hums, nodding, blissed out still. I guess that’s my fault for being such a good fuck.

I head downstairs, adjusting to the idea of this being my life once more. Like my travelling over the holidays was just a dream, a momentary departure, how Sisky’s stay with me was temporary too.

I stand in the kitchen, butt naked, feeling well fucked, and munch on a bit of cheese that I find in the fridge. My body feels content, and the feeling of cock in me lingers, thick and hard, pushing me open, him grabbing my hair and pulling on it. We always do it rough. I like that. And I don’t have to feel the messiness of getting fucked because he pulled out and finished off on me. I cleaned myself off. He only comes in me if he wants to be a dick.

So it’s back to normal now, and Sisky will stop by in a few months and interview me some, and then he’ll go and write that book, and it’ll get published and people will read it, but Sisky isn’t allowed to say where I live now.

And so I can keep hiding out here for the rest of my days.

So that was that, then. My life.

I retired at the age of twenty-seven, and my biography ends there because I did nothing worthwhile from then on out.

Melvin maybe had a point. I might as well have died.

But why pressure myself to work so hard on life? I’ve got a good house and excellent guitars and a lot of books and a steady flow of royalties. I never have to work again if I don’t want to. I’ve got a decent fuck in town, and I have friends, too, far away, and maybe I’ll try harder to visit them sometimes. This is a good set up.

And after Montreal, it’s become clearer and clearer that Brendon will never be a part of this equation again. But that’s alright, alright, alright. It will be alright. He didn’t – He didn’t magically see me, and we didn’t magically get back together, and I’m done feeding myself that bullshit.

And I’m _not_ going to dwell on it now when there’s sex to be had.

I swallow down the rest of the cheese and get out the beer that Clifton brought with him. I use the edge of the counter to get the caps off, beer foam spilling over my knuckles and onto my stomach. I wipe at the still warm, pale skin absentmindedly, ready to quickly drink our beers and start round two.

I hear footsteps behind me. Still wiping at my navel, I turn around and ask, “Fucking in the kitchen? That’s kin –”

And I see Sisky.

In his winter coat and with his satchel and maroon woollen scarf that he probably got for Christmas from his grandmother, and there he _is_ when he should be on the bus to Boston. Right there in the doorway, blocking the way to the hall. He stares at my naked form wide-eyed. I stare at him, equally stunned.

He flushes slightly, his cheeks reddening. I don’t try to hide my body – why the hell should I when I’m not the problem?

“What the hell are you doing here?” I snarl angrily, blood suddenly soaring in my ears, horror hitting me quickly.

“Um, I missed the bus.” He is focusing on looking at the floor now, but his mouth is twisting up at the corners like he’s trying to hold back laughter. “I got a ride out here, I uh – I thought it was Clifton’s pickup out front, I didn’t realise that... you had company.”

My eyes dart to the opened beer bottles and then extend to imagine my post-sex appearance: messed up hair, naked in the kitchen, skin still somewhat flushed. And then I think of Clifton upstairs who’s also naked and post-coital and waiting to fuck me.

And now the kid is here because he’s missed his bus.

“Uh.” I have no idea what to say. What the hell do I say? Think fast, fast, _faster_. “Yeah, now is not a good time.” Obviously. “I’ve got company. Yeah. Uh.”

He almost giggles. Oh, sex is funny to him, is it? Me standing here naked is funny?

It’s not. This is not funny at all. Shit, fuck, _shit_.

“I’ll go for a walk then?”

“Please. Yes. Good idea.” My hands feel sweaty around the bottles. Please, for the love of god, just _leave_.

He makes a show of shielding his eyes and backing out into the hallway. I follow him cautiously, my eyes on him as he navigates back to the front door. Once there, he drops his hands from his face. “I’ll –” he starts, thumb pointing over his shoulder to show he’s going, but then he just stops. And he has this amused, slightly mocking look on his face, for having one on me, but then it’s gone.

Clifton’s frozen at the top of the stairs, naked, very much naked, gazing down at us, and Sisky –

He just stands still. And stares. And pales. And his smile fades. And he looks deadly serious.

And he doesn’t say anything. He looks completely bewildered as his eyes dart between Clifton and me.

All the brilliant things I could say escape me, and so I just stand in the hallway, naked with two beers, looking like I’ve been fucking, and then Clifton is still frozen, too, naked, looking like he’s been fucking.

And Sisky says, “So I’ll just be... Okay then.”

And then he’s turned around and has practically run out of the house. The door slams shut.

“What the _fuck_?” Clifton barks angrily the second Sisky’s gone.

“He missed his bus and came back.” My voice is hollow.

“The fuck?!” he demands, storming down the steps. His hand sweeps through his short black hair nervously. He’s worried about rumours. “I thought he was gone!”

“Me too.”

“Fuck.” He fidgets and looks at the front door. “So he didn’t know about you?”

“No.”

But he does now.

* * *

The lights of Clifton’s car disappear into the woods twenty minutes later. No round two for us, even if Clifton’s been neglected and horny, and I’ve undeniably been the latter.

Having Sisky practically walk in on us is definitely a buzz kill.

Sisky, however, does not come inside. I’ve gotten dressed, my skin still having that lingering electricity from the sex earlier. The smell of a man and come on me. It’s a good smell. My body feels relaxed, pleased by its release, and my ass feels well fucked. All in all, this should be a _good_ feeling, a relaxing and pleasant evening now ahead of me.

But there is no rest for the wicked.

Sisky has not come inside. It’s getting dark outside, but I can just see him on the beach. Sitting on the sand. Facing the ocean. Not getting up though he must be freezing.

I didn’t want him to know. I didn’t want him to fucking know, but now he does, and – It was an accident. It wasn’t _my_ fault that he knows.

But it happened nonetheless, and I need to face the consequences.

Reluctantly, I get boots on and throw on a coat and head out to join him. The sand is hard to walk on and the cold instantly hits my skin after having been used to body heat and the rough hands of a mechanic.

Sisky remains motionless. Maybe he has no plans of ever coming back in again. Now that he knows.

“Aren’t you fucking freezing?” I ask when I’ve reached him. The air tastes salty, but there is only a slight wind. The waves keep coming onto the shore in steady beats. I swear I’ve composed most of my new songs to that sound.

Sisky looks up at me and then quickly looks out to the ocean again. I hold my breath, almost, unnerved and upset. He’s upset, but I am too.

“I didn’t want to intrude.”

“Well, Clifton’s gone, so… you can come inside.”

But he doesn’t budge.

Another homophobe. The world’s full of them. I guess _his_ Ryan Ross was a gigolo and a ladies’ man and definitely not, not, _not_ at all homosexual. Well, fuck him, then. I can’t spend my life trying to be what others want me to be. Fuck him and his kind.

Despite this, I sit down next to him. Share his silence. I wrap my arms around my knees and shiver in the cold. He’s presumably been sitting here since, staring at the ocean. Mind full of mental images of the atrocities taking place inside.

“For how long?” he asks at last. He doesn’t sound like himself – all serious. “For how long have you..?” When I don’t instantly reply, he says a hot and angry, “Always?”

“Not always, no. But for quite a while now. Years.”

“But do you… women too? Or...?”

“I find that the older I get, the less women I feel like sleeping with. And the more I seem to have primarily homosexual interests.” I say the H word so that he doesn’t have to, and I almost cringe at the way I try to make it sound neutral. That I fuck men.

Let Sisky make whatever he wants of it. It took me years to wrap my head around, so I don’t expect him to have digested it in less than half an hour. My preference or interests or quirk or whatever one calls it took Spencer years to accept, too. It seems like he finally has, but at first I lost him as a friend because of it. Well, that and other factors combined. And though I’ve persistently been telling myself not to enjoy Sisky’s company, I have. Even if I need breaks from his overbearing tendencies, him walking out on me now would feel like rejection once more.

“I had heard a rumour about you,” Sisky then says quietly. “I had heard things. But I’ve met your ex-girlfriends so I didn’t… People say so much stuff, I thought it was just another insult in a sea of many.”

“Why does it have to be an insult? Maybe it’s a compliment, even. The Greeks valued love between men better than love between a man and a woman.” But even as I say this, I know this isn’t Ancient Greece and besides, I think their logic only applied to men sleeping with adolescent boys. Well, if you like ‘em young... Okay, I get Sisky, I get it, I do. Saying someone is gay is an insult. That the person in question is wrong. Flawed. Fucked up. Disgusting and filthy and dirty.

Funny how it doesn’t feel like that at all when you’re actually doing it. Feels kind of fucking good, in fact.

“You know,” Sisky says then, sounding morose. “Vicky said that she was in love with you.” He glances at me. This doesn’t surprise me, and yet it does: I didn’t think Vicky would admit it. “She was really drunk at that point but... She said that before she met her husband, she. Well.” He’s going somewhere with this, and I look away, towards the waves. Don’t think of Vicky’s girlish heart or Gabe’s tired heart, don’t think about how maybe I was the one thing that stood in their way when I couldn’t have cared less about their feelings because all I wanted was Brendon. “And Gold. She too –”

“Who?”

“Gold,” he repeats. “My ex-girlfriend. Well. My only girlfriend. Her name wasn’t Gold, it just – just sounded better, like Sisky sounded better than Adam or –”

“Your name’s Adam?”

“Andy named me.” Sisky looks at me then slightly... despisingly? I’m not used to that. He should adore me. Unconditionally. Doesn’t he? “Your old roadie, Andy?” He says it like I might not remember Andy, but of course I do. “He said Adam was a dull name. Asked for my last name, said it had to get better from there. I said Siska. He said that I would not survive with a name like that. ‘Be Sisky’, he said. ‘That sounds groovy.’ And so I’ve been Sisky since…” He looks out into the ocean.

“Gold’s name was Lisa. She didn’t want to be Lisa, so she was Gold instead. And she was in love with you, too. She had... this golden hair. And these pretty green eyes. The first time I saw her, I knew, you know? But she didn’t want Adam Siska, she wanted Ryan Ross. Or Joe if she couldn’t have you. I spent my teenage years trying to get with girls who only wanted you. All of us male followers suffered that same fate. And that’s why Gold left me. She said I wasn’t as deep as you, like she’d ever even met you. And you. Then there’s you.” He stops to laugh, sounding uncharacteristically bitter. “Everyone’s in love with you. All the time. All those girls we knew. And you don’t even like women. I mean... That’s funny. That’s fucking funny. Right? That’s gotta be the joke of the century. And look at where you live, man! I mean, look at this place!” He motions along the deserted beach, at my kingdom by the sea. “All your life you’ve been surrounded by people wanting to give themselves to you! And who do you need? Who do you want? No one. Poor fools don’t realise you have never given yourself to a single person. Not ever. It’s a circus of nothing but fools, and you’re not even directing. You’re not even _looking_. It’s just funny. It’s so funny someone should be laughing.” And then he hangs his head.

And neither one of us laughs.

“Do you think I wanted this?” I ask quietly, gritting my teeth from his attack. “Do you think _this_ is what I was aiming for? You don’t know the first thing about me and who I might give myself to, so –”

“Please. You’re alone.”

“Well, maybe that’s because whoever I wanted to give myself to didn’t fucking want me.” And with that, I stand back up. “You think you know so much, but you know _shit_ , Sisky. Do you think I give a fuck if you judge me? Do you expect me to feel bad that other people created warped up expectations of me? Huh?!”

“Not really,” he mutters, digging his forefinger into cold sand.

“Good. Because I don’t. Fuck you all for thinking I should live for you. And you don’t know the first thing about what happened –” I stall myself, bite my tongue. “You can come inside if you want to. If you want to fuck off, then fuck off.”

I’ve taken two long strides when he calls out, “Wait!” Inhaling deep, I do. I look over my shoulder at him, and he’s twisting his body around to look at me. “This explains things, and – This makes things lock into place, stuff people have insinuated, so... Who was it?”

I say nothing. I feel the punch of it in my guts, the instant sensation of being icy cold inside. And I say nothing.

“I know it’s someone I already know.” He waits for me to say it, but I won’t, and so he says, “It was Brendon, right?”

“Yes. Alright?”

He doesn’t seem surprised, doesn’t seem happy, doesn’t seem much of anything. He looks away. “Did you love him?”

I close my eyes and focus on the sound of the ocean, hope for it to drown my voice. It doesn’t. “Yes.”

“...Do you still love him?” When the silence drags on, he adds, “Off the record.”

“Yes.”

And then I head back to the house.


	5. Pilgrims

Sisky doesn’t leave the following day although I expect him to. Instead he stays, and we ignore each other. He pores over his notes in his bedroom, hardly comes out. I look through the open door when he goes downstairs to get a drink, and he has notebooks and bits of paper and newspaper articles spread out everywhere in the guest room, and the chair is pulled back from the desk where a dozen different pens and a few notebooks are. Seems like he’s going through everything, making notes on his notes. Rewriting my story.

I hear him coming up the stairs and hide in the bathroom. Take a shower just so that he doesn’t think I was hiding from him.

He stays another night, and I don’t ask him when he’s leaving and he doesn’t tell me when he’s going. But it’s on that second morning as I’m eating beans out of a can for breakfast that he comes downstairs and says, “I’d like to interview you today.”

This isn’t really a surprise.

“About what?”

He pauses slightly. “Sex.”

But he doesn’t blush like I expect him to – his tone is defiant. I can’t really put my finger on what he’s thinking. If he was repulsed by me, he would have gone. I get that he’s bitter about his youth, blames me that his own feelings were never returned by female Followers fans, but he didn’t act that way before he found out about me. I don’t get what my sexuality has to do with an ex-girlfriend dumping him, but he takes it personally anyway. So he’s a bit angry, I can tell, but I’m angry too that he thinks he has the right to feel that way.

“Sex. Okay. Well, you have the birds and the bees –”

“You’re not funny, you know.”

And I suppose I’m not.

“So can I interview you?”

“Sure. We can talk about sex.”

And we stare at each other for a while like we’re trying to outdo one another.

* * *

The entire interview is to be kept strictly off record, not that he could even claim in his book that I’m gay. Nonetheless, he needs this to find out about my life, and then he can censor it accordingly. Make it non-explicit for all those innocent kids out there who will be the first to buy a biography of me.

We’re in the kitchen this time, sitting on the opposite sides of the table. He’s got new notes now, fresh from the press, and I see dates and arrows and question marks, and I catch a lot of ‘B’s in there too before he holds the notes up slightly, preventing me from seeing the text.

“How would you describe your sexuality?” he says in a clinically uninterested voice. He looks tired, like he hasn’t been sleeping well. Neither have I.

“Flexible.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know. I sleep with both sexes. Bisexual. Sure, that.”

He purses his mouth and writes something down. I look around restlessly, my hands in my lap. Wishing I could be anywhere but. “How old were you the first time you slept with a woman?”

“Nineteen.”

He stops at this, and his serious facade cracks slightly as he stares at me, trying not to smile. “Wait, you were a virgin until you were nineteen?”

“Hey, it wasn’t from a lack of trying. Girls thought I was too weird.” They did, too. A girl I was head over heels for in high school said I was too intense and that she couldn’t understand what I was going on about half the time. “What does age matter, anyway? I think the quality is more important.”

“I first had sex when I was seventeen.”

“You want me to bake you a cake?” I ask, and he huffs, a light blush on his cheeks. He has no problem asking me personal questions, but he’s bashful about his own experiences. Oh baby, baby, if he wants to compare our sex lives. Because I will win. Every round. “I’ve had more sex in my life than you probably ever will,” I then say, which isn’t to try and make him feel bad, it’s just fact. I’ve had a lot of sex. He just looks at me in a ‘yeah right’ way, but it’s obvious that he’s slept with maybe three girls, tops, and with two of those only once.

“How old were you when you first slept with a man?”

“Twenty-three.”

“So that’s only four years of women exclusively.”

“No, it was twenty-three years of women exclusively. Adolescent crushes, high school hormones, LA music scene fucks... All women. Always.” For the life of me, I can’t remember having had those feelings for men in my youth. I keep scratching under my fingernails with the sharp edge of my thumb, in order to do anything but look at him. “So at first it was all women for me, but then it gradually became split between women and men, kind of depended on my mood, and then it’s slowly changed into being more and more about men.”

He fidgets in his seat, his brows knitting together. “But... When did you know? I mean.”

“When did I know what?”

“Well, if you were sleeping with women, why did you start... men too?” He sounds confused.

“Are you asking why I’m attracted to men or why I fuck men?” It’s a ridiculous question. Why is the sun yellow, why is the ocean salty, why does he sleep with women? All obvious things to him. It’s just the way things are, the way they’re built. And I’m built this way. “Men are great fucks.” The blush on his cheeks gets redder so I go on, feeling slightly vindictive. “You think that with a girl you might Fuck with a capital F, but you don’t actually know what fucking is until you fuck a guy. Girls are soft and small, you gotta be careful even when they want it hard. Men aren’t. And men are so much easier to fuck, too. They don’t accidentally get knocked up. They’re never on their periods. They’re always up for it. And men have great bodies. I guess I’m a sucker for great asses myself, round and pale. Imagine a guy with a – God, with a perfect ass on all fours, offering himself so that you can see his tight, pink hole…” I let my voice fade away, slightly lost in thought. Sisky is bright red, and his eyes are endlessly wide. “Sorry, am I being too graphic for you?”

“Yes.”

“The mental image turns me on.”

“It does nothing for me.” He sounds defensive. “At all.” But he clears his throat slightly, and I’m not fully convinced by his disgust. People get curious.

“It probably doesn’t turn you on because you’re not gay.”

“You said you’re bi, so which is it?”

“Somewhere between the two.”

He doesn’t seem put off by this, however. He knows by now that at the end of the day I prefer men, that I prefer cock and ass and balls.

“What about Brendon?”

The feeling of being naughty and sly vanishes. I was thinking of teasing Sisky more, tell him of my homoerotic accomplishments, but now he’s not talking about me anymore.

“He always knew he was gay,” I say simply. Brendon probably was confused at first, but he seemed to at least know for sure he was the way he was. Sometimes, I almost envy that. At least he knew. All the bullshit and violence and wrongdoing aside, at least they couldn’t take that away from him.

Maybe things had been different for us if I had... been less confused about it all.

At least he knew.

“No, I meant you and him,” Sisky now clarifies, and I feel defensive all of a sudden. “I asked you why men, and you only told me about sex, but – It depends on who you have sex with, don’t you think? Sex can be just physical, sure, but if it’s – if it’s not someone random, then it matters. That person matters.” He clearly has enough sexual experience to have that one sussed out, so I don’t say anything. He interprets my silence as a green light. “Was Brendon the first guy you...?”

I suddenly remember kissing Brendon that night, right there in the hotel corridor, so stupid, anyone could have – But the want and the burn and his taste, his _taste_. “Yes.” Desperate hands, clothes off, endless expanses of hot skin, him beneath me, wouldn’t turn around, no, he wanted us face to face, and so I saw the look on his face when I pushed in...

I press my thumb into the pulse point of my left wrist, feel the sped up rhythm. Feel ashamed and angry and turned on.

“So why did you sleep with him?”

I want to ask, ‘Are you kidding me?’ but refrain. “You saw him on stage. Hell, he only had to hover around that Dallon guy to make you question your sexuality –”

“Did not!” he objects, looking scandalised.

“– so imagine him. Okay? Imagine him giving you this look of – of want and desire. Fucking hell. You think he’s sexual on stage, imagine him in your bed. He knows what he’s doing. He can move those fucking hips of his, and when we fucked, we Fucked, capital fucking F. We might have been a mess, but we had great chemistry. Really great chemistry. Not that it was all him. I think I’m a pretty spectacular fuck too.”

Sisky eyes me like he thinks that I’ll now bounce on him like some kind of a sneaky sex monster. He looks flushed, and I smirk.

“The, uh... I mean.” His fingers card through his hair, and he looks around the kitchen awkwardly. “Um. So you – Er.”

“You’ve done a lot of research. Am I giving myself credit I don’t deserve?”

“No. No, uh. You have a reputation of... Um.” He glances at me, and I love seeing him squirm. “Although I knew those rumours of it, uh, being ten inches _were_ exaggerated. I saw you so I know you’re not actually. Um.” He brings a hand to his face like he’s not sure why he’s still talking. _Ten_ inches? Jesus, I’d probably pass out getting a boner. But thanks, still flattering. Exaggerated but flattering.

“You didn’t see me erect,” I point out anyway, just to tease him. He turns even more bright red, and there’s a tomato out there that’s endlessly jealous.

“Anyway! The, uh – You’re not answering the...” He clears his throat. He wanted to talk about sex, so he’s only getting what he wanted. “So you and – and Brendon had, uh, great sex. Okay. But you didn’t know that going in, so –”

“Well, I figured he’d be a great fuck because I knew he was an excellent cocksucker.”

“Do you have to?” he asks, looking like he’s practically in pain.

“You wanted to talk about sex so I am. You’re the one asking personal questions.”

“You don’t have to be so crude or explicit about it!” He nearly glares at me. “Objectifying it can’t fool me into thinking that it didn’t matter to you. I know it mattered. He mattered.”

“Of course he fucking mattered.” I sound as offended as he does.

“But when did you know that? When you first hooked up or later or...?” His eyes are searching, and I go back to staring at my nails. When the silence stretches on, he says, “Okay, well. How long were you together for?”

I frown at this. “We’ve never been together.”

He looks astonished. “But you –”

“No. He and I have never been together.” I can see that the admission sparks up a dozen more questions inside him, sex related or not, but I can’t. I stand up just as he opens his mouth to start interrogating me. “I’ve got nothing more to –”

“But why?” he rushes out, choosing it from all the things he wants to ask. “I assumed you’d properly been together at some point, even if it was a secret. But you’ve never...? I mean, why?”

Because I wasn’t a decent human being.

“Well, it wasn’t because of the sex, that’s for sure. Interview over.”

He remains seated as I head upstairs, needing to get space to breathe. Out of everything Sisky’s wanted to talk about – the bands, the fame – this causes the biggest sense of turmoil in me. And he’s downstairs, stunned that despite the fragments he now knows about Brendon and me, I never managed to secure the deal, make it even a little official. Or as official as it could be when we don’t want the public to know.

But though Brendon and I never said it, never formally agreed on anything, we were each other’s. At times. In certain moments.

But never for long enough.

God, I need a drink.

* * *

Clifton has a high tolerance for alcohol. He can drive me home after a night of drinking when I’m way beyond the condition to drive, and I can handle my alcohol relatively well. He reminds me of Jon in that sense – he can drink and drink and not get drunk. So it doesn’t matter that the road is bad, that it’s snowy and dark, that pine trees obstruct his view and a moose could easily walk onto the road, and bang, crash, smoke, praise the Lord, we’re finally dead. He simply keeps driving.

He’s been taciturn all night, and I’ve been talking, which is unusual for us. Now he turns onto the narrow road that leads to the house, and he slows down as we enter the woods. I don’t know how late it is, but Tommy kicked us out eventually.

Clifton doesn’t say anything until we’re at the house, and the car’s stopped by the porch steps. A silence hangs over us that he doesn’t fill. Well, okay. Right then.

“You could come in,” I offer. “The kid knows, anyway.”

“Are you kidding me? No way.” He sounds angry. He _is_ angry. Machias is too small for men like us to survive even the tiniest rumour. Hey, I told him Sisky wouldn’t tell anyone, but he’s got it into his head that he will be included in the biography as one of my conquests.

I sigh – dramatically, I can admit that. The back of my skull leans against the headrest. “Or you could come in,” I say again. Why does he have to be so difficult?

He hangs his head and stares at the wheel. “Listen, Ryan –” he starts in this tone, and no, no, I don’t want to hear it.

“Yeah, I know. I know.”

I can sense it. I know. The days are numbered, all these days. Not in any kind of divine way, but because of me. Because of people. What we do and think. There is a sense of finality that hangs in the air, in the dark clouds, and it’s wrapping itself around my blue house by the seashore, the house I wanted because no one else wanted it. Two rejects sticking together.

“Maybe once the kid is gone,” Clifton then amends. “I’ll call you.”

“Sure,” I say, opening the door, “however you want it.”

I climb up the porch steps as he turns his car around. The door isn’t locked, of course it isn’t, and in the hallway I hang my winter coat and kick off my boots. The house is eerie at night like this, unwelcoming. It feels different now. Turns out that by leaving for Montreal, I broke a spell. I feel restless once more.

I’m somewhat aware that it’s late, and the kid must be asleep, so I try to be quiet as I head upstairs. Once on the landing, however, I’m momentarily blinded by light coming from the bathroom before the door closes after Sisky stepping out. He stares at me, clearly taken aback some. He has bed hair and is in nothing but a pair of grey briefs. The door to his bedroom is open, and he looks towards it and then at me again. “Uhm,” he says and awkwardly shifts his weight from one leg to the other.

“Sorry, did I wake you?”

“I had to pee.” He motions over his shoulder.

“Oh.”

He doesn’t move and neither do I. “The, uh. Clifton didn’t come in, then?” He sounds nervous.

“No.”

“Oh. Did you... in the car?”

I genuinely laugh at this as I approach the door of my bedroom. “No. We didn’t.”

We’re not that desperate.

But I stop when Sisky jumps from me moving closer, and he self-consciously wraps his arms around his bare middle. A tension in his stance. This confuses me, and I stare. His state of undress doesn’t register with me until then, though clearly it’s already registered with him. He’s a few inches shorter than me and he’s eight years younger so in my eyes he’s not a fully developed human being but is just some skinny kid still coming out of a growth spurt. He’s somewhere in the middle of complete and a sketch, but his body, however, is fully developed: beneath his clothes he looks surprisingly athletic, his stomach well-toned, his arms skinny but strong looking with veins traceable beneath the skin, and his body reminds me of Brendon’s except Brendon is fuller in the middle, he has these hips, these goddamn gorgeous – whereas Sisky’s just skinny and boyish and plank-shaped. But that can be attractive too, that boyish look, and right now he looks like he knows it.

He’s not really looking at me; it’s more like he’s letting me look. And then he stands there. Like he’s waiting.

“Uh.” I sound unintelligent. His arms slowly drop to his sides. Better view. Well, shit. Shit, this is – I see. “So,” I say quietly. He looks at me owlishly, blinking slowly, scared-looking. A deer in headlights, how dear it is to be in headlights. “You can’t sleep, huh?”

He kind of nods but doesn’t say anything. I can feel his nervousness rolling off of him in waves, but he’s standing still, and I give him points for that.

I slowly approach him, and I expect him to chicken out but he doesn’t. He sticks to his guns, he perseveres. And I have to respect that if nothing else.

“Were you thinking that I might help tire you out?” I ask slowly, stopping within arm’s reach of him. It’s hard to tell how much he’s blushing because of the dark, but I know that he is. “Well, were you?”

It takes him a few seconds to make a sound of any kind. “I, uh...” His voice is trembling. “I was just...”

“Thinking about our conversation earlier, right? Men fucking.”

He draws in an uneven breath, his body full of anticipation. “...Yeah.” And he looks at me, half-terrified but still standing there. I take another step closer, and he seems to instinctively take one back, but there’s nowhere to go. His back hits the wall. He’s breathing fast, chest rising and falling.

I close the distance between us, but our bodies don’t touch. I place a hand against the wall by his head. His eyes go wide, wider, and I lean in slowly, my gaze dropping from his eyes to his lips. He freezes up, hovering slightly like he thinks he should perhaps meet me halfway. I stop with an inch between our mouths. Wait. Whisper, “You don’t wanna go there, kid. You really don’t.”

“W-What?” He looks severely confused, staring at me, my lips, blinking fast.

“Oh, I could fuck you. Get us both off. I could chew you to tiny pieces and then just spit you out, the way I do with everyone. And you know that.” I pull back, then, give us some breathing space. “But I won’t. Besides,” I let myself chuckle to get rid of the heavy tension, “you’re not into guys. Curious as to what the fuss is about, sure, and maybe a little bit in love with the idea of being that intimate with an idol of yours, but you’re not actually gay and the thought of me fucking your virginal ass terrifies you. So no. We’re not ever doing this. Alright?”

A sputter of air escapes from between his lips, spearmint and innocence. “...Alright,” he says quietly, and the second I step back fully, his shoulders slump, he seems to relax, he exhales in relief. He stares at me like he’s only now realising what he thought would take place. “Fuck,” he swears breathlessly.

I’m not being chivalrous. I could. I’ve fucked a few fans who had never thought of sleeping with a guy until I had them on all fours, and those guys probably still aren’t sure what the hell happened. They weren’t gay, they were just star-struck, unable to say no, doing whatever they could sense pleased me. I’ve used it to my advantage. I could do it to Sisky, but I won’t. He matters, and I won’t.

“Dude, I’m sorry,” he then says, a bit mortified. He rubs his face, the spell thankfully breaking. “I just – Spent all night going over the notes, thinking about – about you and your relationships and... and sex.”

“People come onto me all the time,” I smirk, but the awkwardness lingers. Leaving the forced humour, I say, “We don’t have to mention this in the morning.”

“Okay.” He looks beyond grateful. “Okay. Thanks.”

“Sure.”

As I move to leave, maybe even escape, he quickly says, “Ryan?” He’s still in the corner, still in his briefs, still looking slightly shocked. I wait for him to spit it out. “I want to go on another trip. I think it’s important that you – that you come, too.”

“Where to?”

“Seattle.”

I stare at him in confusion. The question of ‘What the hell is in Seattle?’ must be obvious because he says, “Trust me.”

Funnily enough, I do.

“Well, we’re not going impromptu again and leaving this second, and we’re not driving across the damn country either.”

“Oh no, I was – hoping you’d, uh, pay for flights.” And then he smiles sheepishly, a smile I’ve seen hundreds of times before. A smile that relaxes me, helps to dissolve the tension.

Yeah, yeah. I guess I’m paying for the fucking flights.

* * *

Sisky gushes about the luxury of first class for the entirety of the long flight during which I have plenty of time to wonder what the hell I’m doing. I hide myself in Machias and then Sisky, Jon and whoever else manages to coax me out, and I see Cincinnati and I see New York, and I go back to Maine because I want to, not chased by anyone. Plan to stay for good. Not go anywhere.

And when Sisky asks me to go, not even explaining what for, I couldn’t pack faster. Which I actually did this time – toothbrush, books, extra socks. Those are important, socks. I hope London’s treating Spencer well because I don’t have his number and if he calls Machias now, he’ll get no answer. He’ll wonder where I am after I told everyone that I was going home for good.

I’m contradicting myself. I know.

The realisation of how uncertain my plans for myself are is worrying.

Sisky gets out a notebook, sipping on complimentary champagne. He keeps eyeing a redhead stewardess, his cheeks blushing, and I push our night-time encounter out of my mind once more. I think he would have let me had I wanted it, but we’ve both done an excellent job of not mentioning it.

And hopefully it never comes up in conversation ever again.

“We’re staying in the Mayflower Park Hotel,” he says, studying his notes. I let him and Vicky sort things out over the phone. Vicky asked me what the hell I was doing, if I had suddenly discovered my inner itinerant. Maybe.

I did, however, check where His Side is, made sure they’re not in Seattle. That Sisky isn’t planning on doing something incredibly stupid.

But His Side is wrapping up their winter tour, having visited Seattle already. They’re finishing off in Chicago. Not in Seattle, not in the Mayflower Park Hotel. I’m done with chance encounters that are orchestrated by desperation. I’m done seeking him out. It’s like Spencer said, get myself a boyfriend. Accept the death of it and pretend to move on.

“How long are we staying for?” I ask, a gin and tonic in my hand, ice cubes knocking together.

“I don’t know. Not long.”

He’s being mysterious on purpose or, well, a pain in the ass on purpose. But I never asked what our business in Seattle was because I didn’t care. My house just felt oppressive. It never used to. I only got a glimpse of the pattern I was about to comfortably fall back into: Machias, silence, old records, good books, seagull cries, telephone calls, sad waves, casual sex. Not wanting anything.

Ryan Ross. Dead at twenty-seven, not realising it until at twenty-eight.

And at the back of my mind, there is a small, persistent part of me that objects to the idea of my death. One tiny part when the rest of me is unwilling to conform. And it’s thanks to that part that I sit here now.

A close escape. A damn close call.

The sixth one.

I’ve refused to die.

Maybe I should start alternating between New York and Machias. A month here, a month there. Why do things have to be so final, anyway? Enjoy the New York high life, hang out with old friends, hang out with Gabe, then go to Machias, read books, enjoy the solitude, fuck Clifton. Then repeat. I should consider doing something like that.

“Does it take days? This thing in Seattle?”

“No,” Sisky says, shaking his head, shrugging. Being vaguer than vague.

“Right.”

Maybe after I get back to Machias, I can start planning this reintroduction to society. Call Vicky, see what she makes of my plans to live in two places. The thought fills me with a hope I haven’t felt in years.

Maybe it’s finally time.

There’s nothing I can do for this idea now, however, so I restlessly look around the first class cabin, a few business men and us. One of them gives me a thumbs up when I accidentally look his way, and I smile forcedly. I already gave him my autograph and listened to him ramble on about how he played guitar when he was a teenager and how he dreamt of being a rockstar and how his “songs weren’t half bad” and how he thinks my music’s really changed the world.

That’s nice.

When we get to the airport, I want to take a taxi to the hotel, get some rest. It’s early afternoon thanks to time zones, but my body thinks it’s later than that. Sisky, however, says that we need a car, and as we rent the prettiest one (his request, not mine), I grow increasingly more suspicious.

“Hand me your bag,” he requests, trunk open in the airport parking lot. Planes fly overhead. He’s put in his small suitcase, and I hand him the battered duffel bag that I bought in 1970 for our first ever tour. “I can drive us to the hotel.”

“Why do we need a car?”

“We can get some rest, grab some dinner, check out the sights... Hey, you wanna go whale-watching?”

“Why do we need a car?”

“Or not, you know, we can –”

“ _Sisky_. Why do we – For fuck’s sake.” I stop in to take a nervous breath. There’s not much snow here, maybe they’re having a milder winter than us in Maine, but it’s drizzling, too watery to be sleet but still thicker than rain. This mysterious enterprise of his is making me nervous and unsettled. “Does it have to do with Brendon?”

I hate how vulnerable I sound, but I stare Sisky down, and he looks away from me. He hasn’t been questioning me about Brendon since our talk on sex, and I appreciate that, but he – he looks at me differently now. There’s this air of _pity_ when he looks at me, and I hate that.

That he sees right through me.

He closes the trunk. “It doesn’t have to do with him.”

We get in the car, and he chooses stations like he always does, little goddamn Stalin. He hands me a map. “I marked the hotel with an X.” I’m surprised by his organisational skills, but then again, he conducted a study on my life for months before anyone caught on.

But I’m not satisfied with his refusal not to share. “What are we doing here?”

It’s not His Side, and it has nothing to do with Brendon. I think it’s time I get to know. I have no connections to Seattle or – Fuck, what if my mother’s moved here? Was she not about to marry someone from Washington four years back? Or was that Washington, D.C.? Is she even with that guy anymore?

“Are we meeting someone?” I press on worriedly.

“No, okay? We’re just checking something out, but we’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Why not now?”

“Because.” He chews on his bottom lip and peers through the windshield. “Because it’ll get dark soon. It was a long flight. And because you’re – you’re getting snappy so maybe now isn’t –”

“Enough of this. Spit it out, for god’s sake.”

He glances at me guiltily. “But... if I tell you, you won’t come.”

“That bad, huh?” I ask, trying to hide how goddamn confused I am. “I’ll tell you what. We either do it now, whatever we’re here for, or I’m out of this car and on the first plane home. Alright?”

He looks defeated. “Fine.” When I offer him the map, he says, “I don’t need it.” Even more suspicious.

He puts the car in reverse, backing out from between the other rental cards, and the speakers start to hauntingly sing, _Hello darkness, my old friend._

* * *

It’s nothing. Literally. The side of the road in the middle of nowhere. The sun is setting as Sisky switches the engine off. He looks pale and nervous. “Well,” he says. “We’re here.”

We’re nowhere.

“...Okay?”

“Look, I just...” He’s squeezing the wheel too hard. “The way you... wouldn’t talk about it. I thought maybe it’d just be good for you. I was. I was gonna come out here, anyway. For pictures.”

“...Okay...?”

“Okay.” He smiles or tries to, and we both get out of the car. It’s stopped raining but the black road glistens as headlights reflect on it, and white snow decorates the roadsides. I stuff my hands in my pockets and shiver in the cold.

Sisky opens the trunk, and I wait for him, trying to piece this puzzle together but failing to do so. He gets out a camera and then says, “It’s a bit further along, over there.”

We continue by foot, leaving the car behind. Cars pass us on the interstate. I don’t know what I’m looking for but then see something ahead of us, on the side of the road. A flash of colours in the otherwise greyscale surroundings and a few bright flames, like. Like candles or.

I slow down in my steps, feeling a cold that has nothing to do with the January chill.

I know where we are.

“Well, I’ll just,” Sisky says, sounding apologetic as we reach our destination.

I forgot about this place.

It’s obvious that no one else did.

I look at the collection of dead flowers killed by the cold, of cemetery candles, soggy notes, empty booze bottles, cheap looking jewellery, guitar picks, pens, all spread out by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. Sisky takes pictures. I feel sick.

“Fuck.”

“You didn’t know?” he asks, lowering the camera.

“That this has become a memorial site? No.”

Why would anyone? This is – It’s between places, inconvenient, a forty minute drive from Seattle. And people. People come here? For what? To mourn something that has died. To repent like pilgrims, be close to something unholy.

“I can’t believe this.” I back away slightly, shaking my head. The stretch of road looks so innocent, is straight, fuck me, it’s straight and flat and there is nothing, _nothing_ dangerous about it. Nothing that would excuse me. “This is not how I remember it.”

There is no bus lying on its side, no broken glass, no blood on the pavement, no summer rain washing it away. I keep looking around, replacing the scenery with my own gruesome visions.

“How do you remember it?”

I take a deep breath. “We came from... that lane onto this side. And I remember – the bus. On its side, probably. Probably here. A car passing by drove on to find a place to- to call an ambulance, so we waited. I waited. I. I sat. I sat somewhere over there. And Spencer, he was – I thought he was dead, he was lying over there, head covered in blood, and. Well, he was just fine, just some superficial injuries that we thought looked bad. But I was paralysed. Watching him. Brent was with him, he was practically unscathed. I sat there.” I point. My hand shakes. Everything is as vivid as it was that night. “Joe wasn’t in his bunk when we crashed, he was in the lounge. He hit his, uh... his lower back against the table we had in there. This small table. It fractured a vertebra. An inch the wrong way, he could have become paralysed. He couldn’t. He couldn’t move, man. He kept yelling out in pain, lying on the ground over there. He couldn’t move. They operated on him that night. He had to learn to walk again. But he was fine too, in the end. Well, obviously,” I say because Joe Trohman is probably strutting on stage somewhere right now, thrusting his bulging crotch to the delight of female fans.

“What about the others?” Sisky asks softly, tentatively.

“Zack had some cuts here and there. I mean, we were all bruised somehow. But he broke his index finger.” I hold mine up and wiggle it. “He broke that. Almost funny on such a big guy. If. If something funny has to be found, then... It got squashed between him and the bunk wall. William, uh, hit his head, there was a bump. Nothing major but it knocked him out. Mild concussion. Probably the only twenty minutes he’s been quiet in his life, and god, when he came to, he helped others, but only made things worse by panicking. Pete, that’s our manager –”

“I know,” Sisky cuts in, and of course he knows. He’s talked to Pete.

“Fractured his jaw. Flew out of his bunk into the corridor, the bus tilted on the wrong side for him. And Andy had very minor injuries, barely anything.”

“Really? That’s lucky, considering he was driving.”

There is nothing but wonder in his tone, and that’s when I stop. Remember that Sisky doesn’t know.

I say nothing.

“What about Brendon?”

“Bren?” I repeat quietly. My eyes dart to the shrine set up by Followers fans. A newer note hasn’t been destroyed by the weather yet. The ink has smudged, but the letters are big and the note is short: ‘I love you, Ryan’. A shrine to one of the worst nights of my life. When Brendon didn’t... When he didn’t show up in Portland. When it became clear that it was all over. “Brendon wasn’t on the bus.” Sisky seems surprised. It’s becoming rare for me to tell him something he doesn’t know. “He’d quit. I mean that, uh –” I scratch the side of my head worriedly. Guiltily. “He had to stay in San Francisco, he had something to do. He wasn’t on the bus.”

“Wow. Now that’s lucky. From his perspective, I mean. Imagine if he had been on it, you know? He might’ve ended up being the one casualty.”

I don’t entertain this thought or scenario for a second.

“If Brendon had been on the bus, then we wouldn’t have crashed.”

He stops. “What do you...?” He must see the guilt on me because he pales. “Fuck. What do you mean?”

“I drove.” His gasp is timed perfectly. “I was – I was the one.”

“No, you – I’ve seen the police report, Ry, it wasn’t –”

“We lied. I was drunk, we couldn’t – Couldn’t risk me getting charged with a DUI, causing a crash. There were people in the car I hit, and we thought someone might. Might die, and then – Fuck, they could’ve put me in jail, and I was too famous for that. Too talented for that. We lied. Andy got compensated for taking the blame.” Sisky appears to be in complete shock. “I drove. Fuck. _I_ drove that bus, Sisky. And I was drunk because Brendon had left me. I was a mess, so – So had he stayed, I wouldn’t have been driving. I wouldn’t have...” I wipe my cheeks and look away from him, trying to control my breathing. My eyes land on the shrine again. What a sickening, disgusting glorification of death. Who would commemorate that? I try so hard to forget.

But now I remember why I need to be kept away from people. At that moment, I see it so clearly.

Just when I thought that maybe a semi-return would be appropriate, just when...

“I thought you said you two weren’t together,” Sisky says quietly, without blame, and that helps some. Eases the pain a little. Because he’d have the right to tell me to go fuck myself, for having been that selfish. I know I was. Spencer’s forgiven me. I could have made Suzie fatherless that night, Haley a widow, but Spencer’s forgiven me. The other guys – Brent, Joe, Pete – never will. But they would hate me regardless, the crash just adds to it.

Brendon and I never really talked about it either, but he must have thought it only showed what a fuck up I was. Am.

“We weren’t together that summer, I didn’t lie. We’ve never been together. It was a summer fling. A tour fling. But fuck,” I say almost desperately, “that doesn’t mean that I wasn’t in love with him. I kept convincing myself that it was just intense sex.”

He looks embarrassed by my honesty, but this is what he wanted, wasn’t it? The uncensored truth. Me finally telling him all those things that no one should know about a man they adore.

When I think of that summer, a stupid sensation takes over, like butterflies fluttering in my stomach. When I first met him. When things were so good between us. When we could have – If it only had gone differently, if he hadn’t been so... And then it all ends here. On cold ground by Interstate 5.

“I was fucking confused, alright?” I say desperately, needing to justify this at least a little. “I mean, the sex – the sex was one thing, that I could categorise if I tried hard enough. Sex with him was amazing sex but, you know, that didn’t necessarily mean anything. But the way I felt, the way it felt when I was with him... That part wasn’t easy at all.”

“And you were dating Jac.”

“Until I wasn’t,” I say dismissively, and Sisky knows about Jac and Brent, I have informed him of it since in his interviews both parties conveniently left out their affair to make themselves look good. Fuckers. “She cheated on me with a lot of people, and I cheated on her with a lot of people. Brendon was one of them. But he wasn’t just... He was so much...”

“More.”

Yeah.

Cars pass us by, all driving along with ease. Passing the crash site where candles burn. People come here daily, they must do.

“The band was dying and Spencer was leaving and Brendon was gone. Is that excuse enough?” I ask quietly, a rhetorical question that doesn’t need an answer. I don’t want it to be answered because I couldn’t bare it.

“I’m sorry,” he then says quietly. He sounds genuinely sorry. “You didn’t mean it, Ryan. Accidents... Accidents happen. It was bad visibility, it was raining hard. The police report said...” The words are difficult for him to say. He sounds sad and disappointed even as he’s trying to release me from culpability. That’s alright. I’m sad and disappointed too. I am to blame. “Why did he stay in San Francisco?”

“Because I fucked it up. He told me how he felt, and I laughed in his face.” God, I fucked it up. My throat feels dry. It’s not because I’m telling Sisky, however. There isn’t much more I can confess, no further disappointments I could offer.

“But you were confused, you didn’t know that –”

“I knew. Deep down, I knew, and it fucking scared me. I even... I even remember when I realised that him and I... We’d fought, I don’t – I don’t even remember what about, but he was angry with me, and I was all cut up about it. But we made up and he – Or we… _We_. We slept in the back of the bus from Omaha to Denver. There was a bed back there, for me. We’d never – been together like that before. I didn’t sleep, but he did. In my arms. And I think that’s when I first… But I just couldn’t admit it.”

Five years later, here I am. Finally admitting it. I didn’t fall in love with him in New York. It was before that, long before that.

He says, “From Omaha to Denver. That’s a long drive.”

“It was.” An awkward silence lands on us. I think of Brendon curling up into me, breathing steadily. How I kept him close but was so aware of the door, worried about someone just coming in and exposing us. Only a matter of time before they’d find us. Holding him closer. Confused, fucking confused, but so caught up in it. I didn’t really understand what I was feeling for him. “I think that ride was the first time a tiny part of my brain acknowledged that something had changed. Because there he was. Just walking into my life. Wrecking it in his wake.” I take in an unsteady breath. “Like a car crash.”

And with one last look at the roadside shrine, I turn my back on the crime scene. Start heading back to the car. I feel shaken up and useless, ripped open. Sisky follows me, and I wipe my cheeks as inconspicuously as possible.

When we get back in the car, we both just sit there. Watch the distant, weak orange spots of candles ahead of us. It starts to rain again, a steady drumming on the car roof. It’s cold and our breaths rise like smoke. But we don’t move.

“Did you ever see him again until New York?”

“No.”

“So how did you find him again?”

“Bumped into each other at a party.”

“Small world.”

“Miniscule.”

He says, “Fate.”

I don’t fully believe that.

He puts the camera in the backseat before he offers me a cigarette. We both light one and smoke. The last rays of weak sunshine get sucked out, and the dark of the night slowly swallows us, but we’re not in a hurry.

“Well, this is what I’ve got,” he says at length. “My theory, my version. You and him, well, clearly it didn’t work out that summer. But then in New York, you meet again. _708_? Him. A room number. The Chelsea Hotel, right? I know you lived there. And the song’s about an affair, everyone knows that. It’s... it’s obvious now that it’s about him. And the Auden poem you quote in the lyrics, that poem’s about a guy. Auden was gay. It makes sense now, you must have – related, I guess. You were with Keltie, though. He was with Shane. But you two still...” We still. I say nothing to his version because we both know it’s accurate. “You cheated on Keltie with him or a lot of people?”

“A few people,” I say honestly. Don’t think of her red eyes when I made her cry. “Mostly, uh. Mostly it was men.” It justified it somehow, that I cheated on her with men and not other women. “I tried to be what she deserved, you know, but I couldn’t. She wanted a good man. I wasn’t. And then I met him again. And then it was just him.”

It was always just him.

“What about him and Shane? Did Brendon... with other guys or just you?”

“Just me.” It feels validating even after all this time. Just me. I was the only one who could wreck their pretence of a home. Only me he gave into. “Shane was the rebound guy who didn’t know when to leave.”

The mention of him helps the visual of the bus crash disappear, makes me feel more composed. As long as I remember selectively, choose which bits of history to cling to. Remember that Shane stole him. Refused to let go. It was so obvious that he should have been mine. He got what he deserved.

Both of them.

“Fuck, why the hell did you hire Shane to begin with?”

“To be closer to Brendon.”

He looks at me like I’m messed up. Thanks for the insight. Thanks.

“It fucking worked,” I say in my defence. I blow out cigarette smoke. “For a while, it worked.”

“And when it stopped working?”

“I fired Shane.” As simple as that. “Things have expiration dates. Affairs have expiration dates. You have to evolve or die, and he wouldn’t evolve, so we... so we died. Same with The Followers. We couldn’t evolve, were unwilling to, so we died.”

“Brendon ended it?” he clarifies.

“It was mutual,” I lie. None of it was mutual. I was down on both knees, begging. “Brendon fucked me over in the end. He kept changing his mind, ending the affair, rekindling it, ending it, rekindling it... Maybe he did it as payback for that,” I say and motion at the crash site ahead. “I don’t know, but I didn’t deserve it. I swear to god I didn’t deserve what he put me through. He really...” The anger in my tone keeps growing as dark, hot flames swirl in my guts. “And now he’s got his band and rising fame. He’s dusted me off.”

“I don’t think that’s true,” he says quietly, apologetically.

Sure it’s true.

“I can’t be here anymore,” I tell him, and he dutifully starts up the car.

We wait by the side of the road for a quiet gap, and then he does a U-turn.

I keep my eyes on the rear-view mirror long after the crash site’s disappeared.

* * *

The hotel is one of the most expensive in town, and Sisky and I stand out in the lobby, me with my small duffel bag, him by existing, but the hotel manager escorts us, shakes my hand, tells me that if I need anything, anything at _all_ , Mr. Ross, and guests turn their heads and mumble and gasp, and I keep my head low the best that I can.

There’s complimentary champagne in the suite, and Sisky and I both instinctively head for it, soon sitting by the window showing us Seattle, sipping on the champagne. We see the lights of the city competing with the dark, the Space Needle and then the darkness of the sound and the way the water reflects the city lights.

Sisky’s got his own room, a suite smaller than mine, but I didn’t object when he followed me in. We say nothing but enjoy the expensive drink and the stunning view in a luxurious hotel room. Our clothes are wrinkled and our souls are tired. I feel like a mismatch puzzle piece forced into a slot.

Long neglected guilt swirls in my guts, useless what ifs like _what if Spencer had died?_ or _What if I had just waited longer?_ Because Shane had realised that Brendon had been unfaithful. I still remember that anguished realisation of his: “I think he’s cheated on me.” Shane had figured it out. Maybe if... if I had just sent him away or even told him that Brendon had been with me, maybe then – The two would have split up. And Brendon would have come to me. He said that Shane might leave him, but surely I wouldn’t.

So if I had just waited. Had the patience of a saint.

If I hadn’t been such an emotional wreck, so desperate, so vengeful.

Maybe.

What if.

Possibly.

Too late.

“Do you think a person can ever redeem himself for all the wrong he’s done?” I ask quietly.

“Why not? Do you think God’s keeping score?” he counters, though he knows I don’t believe in that. He’s said that he thinks we can’t rule it out entirely. “I don’t think He is. I’d like to think that... if He exists, then He is too great, too amazing to give a rat’s ass about what humans do. What an individual does. I don’t think God gives a damn if, I don’t know, a Mrs. Smith in Des Moines, Iowa lies to her neighbour. God is too divine to care about petty humans. God is too great to talk to us.”

“And we’re all too small to talk to God.”

“I think we really are.”

“So redemption is up to us, then?” This doesn’t sound good to me because I’ve been trying. Leaving New York, losing touch with friends, hiding in my forlorn house... It’s been equally about preservation and punishment. If I was able to forgive myself, surely I would have by now. If I could give myself absolution.

“It is up to us. But people can change. I believe that people can change.”

I gather my courage before asking, “Do you think I need to change?”

He laughs slightly. “I, uh. I can’t answer that.”

That’s probably a yes. But the guilt I feel mixes with anger. I did wrong. I can recognise that. But Brendon had it coming, I swear. For treating me the way he did. When I tried so hard, and he gave me nothing in return.

“It’s because of his childhood,” I then reason, and Sisky looks mildly confused. “Brendon. He rejects the people who love him. That’s what it is, you know. He thinks he should get them before they get him.”

“If that’s true then it’s a flaw in him that he needs to deal with,” he says, sounding all reasonable and sensible. But when you’re the one suffering from this ‘flaw in him’, there is nothing sensible about it. “Look, I know it’s not my place, but...” he then begins softly. “It sounds like he was a bit wishy-washy about you two ending... And he covers that Followers song. He sings your words. Maybe he _still –_ ”

“I’ve been down that road myself. It’s a dead end.”

“But –”

“No. I made damn sure that things between us got wrecked beyond recognition, so no.”

“But –”

“Sisky,” I snap impatiently. “No.” I can’t deal with any more false hope. “I’m angry with him, and maybe he’s persistently ambivalent, but trust me, I think it’s safe to say he’s equally angry with me.”

“For firing Shane,” he says, nodding, and I can’t help but let out a short, humoured laugh. If only. He looks at me, then, but I’m embarrassed by my outburst and can’t look back. Instead I look at our Seattle view, hoping that he drops the topic. “Ryan...” he starts slowly, in a slightly suspicious and worried tone.

“What?” I manage, and the single word sounds guilty beyond belief. And there’s something in the way I say it or in the way I look, there must be _something_ there, because right then he seems to get it.

“You didn’t,” he gasps, eyes wide. “You did _not_!” When I say nothing, his fears get confirmed. “You slept with Shane?!” He sounds horrified like the act in question took place recently. “But I – All the things you’ve said about how he screwed you over, how he was the one who’s to blame, and then you slept with his boyfriend?!”

“Don’t play my fucking conscience, alright? I only gave him a taste of his own medicine. That’s all.” My hand has started to sweat holding the champagne glass. Fuck. “You don’t know what it was like,” I then whisper in my defence.

“No, I don’t. But you loved him.” He sounds so disappointed. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t like him stirring shit up and bringing back all these memories and feelings I’ve tried to suppress. Like that look on Brendon’s face, asking me what the hell I did. And his eyes meeting Shane’s. And Shane standing there, guilt-ridden, so obvious. That look on Brendon’s face. The last one I ever saw.

“I loved him,” I admit, “and he knew it. And he kept stringing me along. Well, I – I just won’t let anyone do that to me. Not even him.”

Sisky looks inconsolably hurt, but I can’t keep apologising for that. I’ve been doing penance. When will it be enough?

“But –”

“But what?!” I bark angrily. “What do you want me to say?! That I fucked up? I know that! That it was the biggest mistake of my life and I’ve been wishing I could take it back since it happened? It doesn’t _matter_ what I say because it doesn’t change anything. I wanted revenge. Well, I got it. I sure showed him.” My words drip sarcasm.

Sisky looks pale, and he tries to come to my rescue once more. “You didn’t mean it.”

I meant what I told Gabe back in New York: the great thing about this kid is the way he excuses everything I do. This one, however, even he can’t make right.

“Oh yeah, he _fell_ on my dick, Sisky.” I shake my head disbelievingly. “I didn’t mean to crash the bus, and I didn’t mean to fuck Shane. Funny how I’m so full of these good intentions, but all of my actions just show what a shitty human being I am.” I shake my head in disbelief of myself, and he doesn’t have anything to say to me. What could he say? This time, we’re both out of excuses. “The bottom line is... The bottom line is that I wanted to protect Brendon from anything that might hurt him. And then I turned around and stabbed him right in the back. Who does that?”

He has no reply to that either.

“I can’t change the past. I have to live with it. I didn’t deserve what he did to me, and he didn’t deserve what I put him through, so maybe we’re both better off this way. Never to see each other again. It’s... It’s got to be better this way.” I stand up, dangle the glass in a loose fist. Feel the weight of the world on my shoulders. Realise that the likes of me are best kept in Machias, away from the world.

“Loving someone like that isn’t right,” I say quietly. “When you do it for all the wrong reasons.”

He lets out a barely audible sigh.

Yeah, well it’s over now. “It’s all over.”

Sisky remains seated as I head to the bedroom, where I proceed to sit in the dark for a while, waiting for the noise in me to quiet down.

When I walk out again, Sisky is gone.

* * *

By morning, I have calmed down. I had nightmares again, except sometimes they’re dreams. They only take on a nightmare form when I wake.

The guilt and the anger have balanced themselves out, leaving me resolute, leaving me with a sense of distance from it all. Like it happened to some other version of me.

Sisky knows now that Brendon turned me into a mess, a wounded creature. He knows what we did to hurt one another. He knows that he and I went to Montreal, but I couldn’t bring myself to talk to Brendon. He knows that Brendon doesn’t need me and that I am struggling trying to teach myself to do the same.

It feels like a new type of dawn, like the day after a funeral. It was good that I came here. Good that I finally laid it to rest.

I call room service, get myself the ‘royal breakfast’, whatever that may be, and look around the suite. Maybe I could stay here. Why the hell not? Go whale-watching. Write a few songs. Seattle is bound to offer more variety in casual sex than Machias, anyway. And it’ll give me rain.

I’m halfway through my breakfast, reading the morning newspaper that came with it, when Sisky arrives. I open the door with a slice of toast in my hand, munching on it, and say, “Help yourself.” I motion at the table that’s now been catered for a king.

He seems like he’s holding back excitement, though I don’t know what he could possibly be excited about. He joins me at the table, though, takes some toast and pours himself some coffee. I read the paper, and he stares at me from across the table. He’s got a newspaper himself. I don’t know what’s changed from last night, when I finally managed to corner him enough for him to run out of things to say.

“Are you flying out to New York now?” I ask, assuming that he’s done in the city. “I was thinking I might stay here for a few weeks. Check out the sights.”

“I was thinking Chicago.”

“Going home?” I ask because New York was supposed to be his next destination for more interviews.

“Not really.” And as if he had been waiting for a cue, he opens his newspaper, finds a page and says, “Read this.”

I take the paper from him and lay it on top of mine. It’s the entertainment section: Hamlet apparently was butchered by a local theatre company, and oh. Again he bombards me with one of these.

“It’s an interview with Brendon from when His Side played here last week,” he rushes out.

“Sisky, I –”

“Okay, just. Would you just please read it?” He eyes the page, upside down to him, and he reaches over and points. “Just read the end.”

My eyes look to where his finger is and read ‘Ryan Ross’. As usual. Fine.

_After Ryan Ross attended a His Side show in December, fans have been eager to see the music legend make a second appearance. His Side, however, claims not to know Ross’s whereabouts. “We were surprised when we heard that Ryan had come to the show,” Roscoe says. “We haven’t been in contact with him, but we hope he enjoyed it.”_

_Roscoe has been dubbed as the protégée of Ryan Ross. Does he think this is fair?_

_“Ryan and I often talked about music, what we liked, what we thought made good music. In that sense he’s influenced me. He retired shortly after I got signed, and we lost touch. The music you hear is my own.”_

_So has their close relationship been exaggerated? Roscoe shrugs and doesn’t comment, but after a few more incentives concludes, “Ryan gave my career a kick-start. I don’t know if I would’ve ever succeeded without his support, and I will always owe him for that. He’s welcome to as many His Side shows as he feels like, and I hope that if he does, he’ll come tell us what he made of it. It’d be nice to catch up.”_

Wandering Lips, _the debut album by His Side, is available in record stores now._

Sisky is staring at me expectantly when I look up. “Well?” he demands.

“Well, what?”

“Are you kidding? He said he wants to see you!” He grabs the paper and reads, “Look, right here! ‘It’d be nice to catch up’! He said that he wants to catch up! And look here, he says he wants you to come to a show and hang out!”

“Sisky, you’ve obviously never done PR in your life. Of course he says that. He can’t start slacking me off in interviews, can he? Not when I’m so goddamn glorified.”

He glares at me, but when I’m right, I’m right. “I think it’s his way of saying he wants to see you,” he persists.

“Because I read The Seattle Times, clearly.”

“No, because –” He seems frustrated. “Because what is he supposed to do? You vanished on everyone, including him. And okay, he gets asked about you plenty, but sometimes he brings you up in interviews all on his own! That means something, doesn’t it? And then you go to Montreal, but you don’t even go talk to him, so what is he supposed to make of that? Maybe that you hated the show or the music or – Or maybe that you don’t want to talk to him, you just wanted to check out the music. That you don’t care about him on a personal level.”

“He knows better than that.”

“Does he?” he questions. “He can’t read your thoughts, and you can’t read his. And he’s on tour. He can’t seek you out, so he has to –”

“I stayed in Machias for seven months! One call to Vicky, and he would’ve had my address, alright?”

“God, you’re so stubborn,” he mutters. “Do _you_ want to see him? I’m not saying get back together. You two – you’ve got some severe issues, so I’m not. I’m not saying that. But you weren’t just a dysfunctional quasi-couple, you were friends too. You guys connected. So have you ever... thought about the fact that you need to at least talk to him about what happened? That it will always haunt you if you don’t?” When I don’t reply, he sighs. “Ryan. You’re not moving on. You’re just finding new places to hide.”

I won’t tell him he’s right. And there’s truth to his words, that my silence and Brendon’s silence or, on the other hand, him speaking out and me making appearances... It can be interpreted in so many ways. How do I know if Brendon and I are in sync at all?

Sisky now digs into his pocket and hands me a wrinkled paper napkin. “Here. I got you this.”

I stare at it. It’s got a Chicago address on it. “What is this?”

“It’s where he lives now.”

Something heavy settles in me from the knowledge, followed by a silent buzz. Chicago. He’s moved to Chicago? I thought that... I don’t know. Maybe he moved to LA.

I quickly look away, but the address is already burned into my memory, some part of me desperate to know. Have a way of locating him.

I don’t ask Sisky how he’s got it. He has ways.

“What do you want me to do with this?” I ask, my voice suddenly rough.

“Get rid of a few ghosts.”

“But _I’m_ not the one who has to make amends. He –”

“You both fucked up. I’d imagine you both have baggage.” He leans back in his chair. Shrugs. “His Side is finishing off the tour in Chicago.”

And he says it like it’s final. That’s that.

Checkmate.

I look at the address again. A gateway to Brendon. Some peace. A bit of closure.

Getting rid of a few ghosts.

* * *

I should never be trusted to drive a vehicle of any kind; not because I am a lousy driver, but because I tighten my grip of the wheel with every passing truck. I look in the newspaper every day for that one headline of a car crash where they simply don’t know what happened. Maybe the driver lost control of the car. Suffered a seizure. Was trying to dodge a child running across the street. Something to explain why his car and insides ended up painting the front of a Canadian frozen goods truck on its way from Montreal to Detroit.

I drove from Portland to Los Angeles once. It was a pleasant trip, heading south, the air getting warmer and the people more tanned. It took me four days to drive because I kept getting distracted and took a small detour in Nevada where I got drunk as hell with a guy who had worked as a circus clown all of his life. We were exactly alike, me and him. It’s easy to distract me because I never know what I should be paying attention to. Is it a new guitar model, the glimpse of something better and more dignified, a pair of brown eyes that always amplified the smile on perfectly shaped lips? During my West Coast road trip, I lost count of the times I saw an oncoming car and considered twisting the wheel to the left. Crash. Bang. Smoke.

I don’t know if anyone else has these thoughts when they drive. I’ve never asked. When I crashed the tour bus back in ’74, I found myself wondering if it was on purpose or not. I didn’t mean to do it, but maybe I subconsciously wanted to.

For a while, we thought Joe would never walk again.

Now I’m driving in a Chevy rental, navigating from O’Hare to an address scribbled on a napkin in messy handwriting that isn’t mine. The car is brown, a light brown that resembles baby shit. It was the only one they had left. The wipers make a wheezing sound as they try to battle away the heavy, wet snowfall.

“Are you nervous?”

I don’t bother looking at the kid on the passenger seat. “No.”

“Brent said,” he begins, launching into yet another lie someone has said about me. People love to talk and talk and talk about me, “that, during _Jackie_ , you were so nervous that you got drunk before every show.”

“He flatters me,” I note, annoyed that this one isn’t a lie at all – the only way I could deal with the pressure of a ten thousand-headed crowd was alcohol. Thanks, Brent, that one will make me look good. No. It will make me look like a victim. Maybe that’s a good thing.

“He also said that it got better during the second leg. You drank less, were more focused. You know, after you met _him_ ,” he points out obnoxiously. I resist the urge to steer the car off the road just to shut him up, and when he takes in his dying breath, mouthing an anguished ‘Why?’, I’ll tell him why: because he couldn’t hold his damn tongue. The white snow turns an ugly shade of traffic fume black when it hits the ground, making the surface of the road slippery, but I keep us on the road for now. “Now Gabe. He said that you were never nervous during the _Pearl_ tour. I suppose you changed.”

“You love the sound of your own voice, huh?”

“Yup,” he beams, light brown locks falling in front of his enthusiastic eyes. He has got a young, good-natured face he tries to mature with stubble, but it’s still irrevocably made childlike by the bright energy that’s always there in his words and actions. He’s got slightly hollow cheeks and narrow line-like lips, and a forehead just a fraction tall enough to look like a mismatch. I concentrate on driving, and he falls silent for a while. When he speaks, he sounds troubled. “What if he’s forgotten? Or what if he’s still mad at you?”

“What if I’m still mad at him?”

“You’re not,” he says knowingly. I hate it when he’s right. The snowfall is slowing down, and I shift in my seat uncomfortably and feel the seatbelt scraping the side of my neck. “I’m nervous for you,” he concludes, the excitement now back. I don’t need his nerves, support or shoulder to cry on. He has no idea how much his enthusiasm wears me out. He looks at the map in his lap. “Take the next left,” he commands, and I change lanes. “You know, I wonder what he’s like. I’ve heard so much about him. It’s slightly surreal to meet a stranger that you’ve pictured naked a dozen times. Well, actually, I found this one picture in your house where he _was_ in the nude, so –”

I pull up to the curb, coming to a fast stop. He tenses up, eyes wild as he looks around. “What are you doing?”

“I’ve told you not to touch my fucking stuff,” I say again. _Again._ The nosy little bastard. “Here, your stop,” I tell him and point out of his window to a shop door that has green, cursive letters: C-A-F-É. “Go get yourself coffee.” Like he needs to be more hyper.

His mouth drops open dramatically. “I’m coming with you!”

I grit my teeth and smile. “No, you’re not.” I glare at him, and he glares back. “Out, Sisky! Out!”

Sisky throws his hands up into the air. “You’re seriously not letting me witness the reunion that would make Romeo and Juliet seem like –”

“There was no reunion for those two – they died.”

“Oh.” Sisky pulls on his bottom lip uncertainly, but recovers quickly. “I never finished the movie, truth be told. They spoke English in such a weird way.”

I unbuckle myself and get out of the car. Chicago is cold, snowflakes landing on my black coat and melting into it. I round the Chevy and open Sisky’s door.

“Okay, okay!” the kid shouts, lifting up his hands. “I’m out! See! Look at how out I am!” He scrunches his nose at the cold, looking more comic than hurt as he shoots me a nasty look.

“I’ll come get you later,” I promise.

“If you don’t, I know where he lives!” He has taken out his black leather notebook and is scribbling in it furiously, completely ignoring the sleet.

I stop at my open door and give him a disbelieving look. “Don’t take notes now.”

“ _As the infamous Ryan Ross nervously re-entered the car, dumping his devoted and loyal companion by the side of the road like yet another groupie he had loved then abandoned like an unwanted kitten –_ ”

I don’t hear the rest as the door slams shut and I take off. Sisky’s reflection sulks into the café in the rear-view mirror, and I glance at the map on his now empty seat. It doesn’t take me long to get where I’m going.

The car on the driveway is black and classy, this year’s model, a ‘79. It’s much more tasteful than what I park in front of the house, and for a wild moment, I hope none of the Chicagoans living on Brendon’s street notice the has-been rock star arriving in such a tacky excuse of four tyres and a wheel. If it is Brendon’s house, which I have my doubts about. A young man with a guitar case is coming down the street, and I wait for him to pass. It’s paranoia to fear he’d recognise me, but I never did know what to say to the fans to begin with.

Music is not about the man behind it, and therefore any interest people have in me is unwarranted. All they need to know, all they should want to know, is already there in the music. And no one ever understood that apart from me. They never –

But I don’t want to think about it anymore.

I take my bag to the door with me. It’s presumptuous, but with the final shows being local, I’m assuming Brendon is staying at home. I shouldn’t assume anything when it comes to him. I learned that the hard way.

The door opens on the fifth ring.

“Ye –”

The rest of Brendon’s sentence fades away as his eyes land on me. Brendon looks a little older, which makes me realise how overdue I am. He has a slightly off look that comes with his line of work, bags under his brown eyes. I would know how that life throws anyone off balance. But if anything, he looks more like a man, more mature. He keeps doing that to me. I don’t mind.

“Heard you’re shacking up in Chicago now,” I explain and state it like a fact I have as much interest in as the heart rate of a mouse, the melting point of silver. None at all.

“Yeah,” he nods tiredly, eyes averting, the cornered prey after an exhausting hunt where he is the deer and I am the wolf. After a long, long time, neither one of us seems to be running. Brendon doesn’t look surprised to see me. I am not a predictable man; he could at least gasp a little. The tiniest bit. Just to amuse me. I’m fucking surprised that I’m here.

“So much for being old friends,” I note and don’t give him a chance to reply. “Invite me in for a beer.”

Brendon shakes his head. “I’m busy.”

Sisky was right. He is still mad.

“I’m busy too, but here I am anyway.”

I stare him down. My stomach curls up now that I am in his presence, but he doesn’t sense it.

Brendon sighs and holds the door open, and I step into the living room, throw my bag onto the couch. Being here, travelling across the country for the one guy, the only guy who ever came out to look at the night sky with me and invent new constellations, and I – Fucking hell. I will stand my ground and act my best to convince myself that it means nothing to me. I lick my lips, remember what he tastes like.

“One beer, but then I have to go,” Brendon mutters and heads for the kitchen, and I stare after him quietly. He slows down and turns back around, a hesitating look on his face. “Are you coming to the show tonight?”

“I was counting on it.”

He looks straight at me, and I am right back there in Ottawa, outside Civic Center where we kissed next to the tour bus that I had not yet smashed. I’m in the cabin up in Bismarck where I handed him some part of me that he politely declined. I’m in San Francisco picking a fight with him, in New York watching him go through records he doesn’t plan on buying as he sneaks glances at me working behind the counter, and then we are on the backroom floor, hoping to god Eric doesn’t come early for his shift. Brendon says, “I can get you a backstage pass.”

“Could you get two? I came with this kid.”

“What kid?” His voice is tense.

“My stalker.”

He makes a disbelieving ‘tut’ with his tongue. “You sure know how to pick your friends.”

“And lovers, though he’s not one of those,” I say calculatedly.

Brendon doesn’t deny that that’s what he was asking. “I can get two.”

“Thanks.”

He points at my bag. “You staying here tonight?”

“Sure,” I shrug. He nods nervously and heads for the kitchen. 

I have swerved my car onto his lane, and we have collided yet again.

Crash.

Bang.

Smoke.

_End of Vol.3 – I_


End file.
